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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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Chap. Copyright No.. _ 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




MICHAEL FARADAY 



CHAMPIONS 



OF 



CHRISTIANITY 



By SILAS FARMER 

II 

Author of u History of Detroit and Michigan/' m The Royal 

Railroad/' "The Truth Teller," "The Teacher's 

Tool Chest," etc. 




A, 



) *W> ' c 



i 



NEW YORK : EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : CURTS & JENNINGS 



i 






Copyright by 

EATON & MAINS, 

1897. 



Eaton & Mains Press, 
150 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



PREFACE 



THE Bible says, "Not many mighty, not 
many noble, are called. 

This is true of necessity, for the number of 
the mighty and noble has always been small 
compared with the whole number of persons. 

This work, in its Christian testimonies, dif- 
fers from all other works in that, instead of 
giving merely a biographer's statement, it 
gives the very words of the mighty and noble 
of various nationalities, vocations, and pursuits, 
verified in each case by reference to volume 
and page, so that every quotation is like a 
citation in a legal brief. 

Condensed biographies are given of each 
person quoted, in order that the collateral 
facts of their personality and achievements 
may strengthen and reinforce the testimony 
they give. The number of persons quoted in 
each vocation is limited to two, because other- 
wise the volume would be too unwieldy and 
expensive for general use. All persons named 
are well and widely known, and not dependent 



6 PREFACE. 

upon temporary public position for notoriety, 
and the personal character of each is believed 
to be unimpeachable. 

All direct statements have been selected 
with a view to their use by others as quota- 
tions, and it is believed that they will be found 
very serviceable. 

Most of the testimonies are in themselves 
valuable arguments in favor of Christianity 
and against forms of unbelief. Some of them 
admirably exemplify Christian life, thought, 
and service, and as a whole they constitute an 
excellent religious tonic. 

The Author. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 
PREFACE , 5 

CHAPTER I. The Gage of Battle n 

CHAPTER II. Champions from the Govern- 
mental World 19 

Statesmen ; Bismarck, Gladstone. Patriots : 
Washington, Garibaldi. Jurists : Blackstone, 
Story . Generals : Moltke, Grant. Admirals: Blake, 
Farragut. 

CHAPTER III. Champions from the Social 
and Business World 37 

Philanthropists : Howard, Cooper. Physicians : 
Harvey, Jenner. Surgeons : Simpson, Agnew. 
Lawyers: Erskine, Webster. Merchants: Dodge, 
Williams. Explorers : Raleigh, Stanley. 

CHAPTER IV. Champions from the Artistic 
World 59 

Painters : Michael Angelo, Allston. Engra- 
vers : Dlirer, Bewick. Potters : Palissy, Wedg- 
wood. Architects : Wren, Scott. Composers : 
Handel, Haydn. 



8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER V. Champions from the Literary 

World 75 

Printers : Gutenberg, Caxton. Editors : Hol- 
land, Bryant. Philologists ; Muller, Sayce. Egyp- 
tologists : Lepsius, Ebers. Lexicographers : John- 
son, Webster. Historians : Carlyle, Guizot. Poets : 
Milton, Whittier. Novelists : Scott, Dickens. 

CHAPTER VI. Champions from the Scientific 
World 101 

Astronomers : Galileo, Herschell. Physicists : 
Brewster, Henry. Geologists: Lyell, Dawson. 
Chemists : Davy, Faraday. Botanists : Linnaeus, 
Gray. Naturalists : Cuvier, Agassiz. Ornitholo- 
gists : Wilson, Audubon. Mathematicians ; New- 
ton, Hamilton. Inventors : W r att, Morse. 

CHAPTER VII. The Award 133 

INDEX 137 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 
Michael Faraday Frontispiece 

David G. Farragut 18 

Sir Walter Raleigh. ... 36 

John Milton 58 

Sir Walter Scott 74 

Samuel F. B. Morse 100 



* 



CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY, 



CHAPTER I. 
The Gagfe of Battle* 

CHRISTIANITY fearlessly throws down 
the gauntlet and defies its enemies. 

If all the learned, influential, and notable 
doubters, infidels, atheists, and agnostics were 
gathered together, their numbers would not 
supply officers for the champions that Chris- 
tianity has in the field. 

Christianity can afford to be weighed, meas- 
ured, and estimated by the character and 
ability of those who have accepted its teach- 
ings. The men and the women who have 
achieved the largest and most lasting, the 
most definite and valuable results in literature 
and learning, industry and invention, including 
the best-known leaders in the political, legal, 
commercial, artistic, literary, or scientific world, 
were believers in God and the Bible. 

Our unbelieving friends sometimes say that 
" the churches are made up of women and 



12 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

children." Women and children may be at 
one end of the line, but the wisest and greatest 
men are at the other end, and if they believe 
in Christianity, all persons of lesser note would 
do well to accept the belief of their superiors 
in ability and learning. 

Irreligion has fought persistently against 
evidence, and has always been ready with a 
word and a blow ; but the words of Beza, the 
Reformer, to the King of Navarre are as true 
to-day as when uttered. " Sire," said he, u it 
belongs truly to God's Church rather to 
suffer blows than to strike them ; but let it be 
your pleasure to remember that the Church is 
an anvil which hath worn out many a ham- 
mer." 

Christianity has as its defenders : 

Statesmen, comprehensive, resourceful, ca- 
pable, and successful in all governmental and 
administrative problems. 

Patriots, whose pure and lofty principles and 
labors have made their names synonyms of 
progress in humanity and liberty. 

Jurists, whose analyses of legal principles 
and learned elucidations of the laws of equity 
are universally known and recognized. 

Generals, whose military combinations, un- 
yielding perseverance, and masterful achieve- 
ments have never been excelled. 



THE GAGE OF BATTLE. 1 3 

Admirals, whose skillful and victorious battles 
on the sea blazoned their names forever on the 
roll of fame. 

Philanthropists, the memory of whose deeds 
perfumes all lands. 

Physicians, who unveiled marvels and mys- 
teries in the human frame, relieving and saving 
millions of lives. 

Lawyers, with legal foresight, forensic powers, 
and eloquence unsurpassed. 

Merchants, whose multiplied business ven- 
tures reached all lands, and whose name and 
fame reached everywhere as well. 

Explorers, venturesome, courageous, and de- 
termined, braving all dangers and succeeding 
against all odds. 

Painters, whose creations will charm and cap- 
tivate for centuries to come. 

Engravers, able to interpret thought, emo- 
tion, and color with a mere graver's line. 

Potters, with unrivaled perseverance and un- 
surpassed inventive skill, creators of a multi- 
tude of forms of artistic beauty. 

Architects, who thought in perspective, pro- 
ducing structures wondrous in their service, 
symmetry, and strength. 

Composers, whose souls were saturated with 
harmonies from heaven, and whose strains 
transport one thither. 
2 



14 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Printers, who made literature and the Bible 
possible in every tongue. 

Editors, who inspired pure and patriotic 
thought in the breasts of countless thousands. 

Philologists, hearing and comprehending all 
the voices of the past, by whomsoever and 
wheresoever uttered. 

Egyptologists, readers of symbols and hiero- 
glyphs, unravelers of ancient mysteries. 

Lexicographers, teachers of millions and 
torchbearers for all literature. 

Historians, accustomed to trace effect to 
cause, discerners of the secret springs of mo- 
tive, and definers of the results of action. 

Poets, full of all the noblest, kindest, holiest, 
and purest thoughts and fancies, speaking to 
hearts in every land. 

Novelists, who projected imaginations into 
realities — men full of thought, feeling, and 
action, able, for the time, to live as many lives 
as their characters portray. 

Astronomers, traveling paths frequented by 
God himself, and weighing, naming, and meas- 
uring his mightiest works. 

Geologists, who, in rocks and stones, read the 
hieroglyphs of the Maker. 

Physicists, interpreters and revealers of 
nature's laws, making known facts before un- 
known. 



THE GAGE OF BATTLE. 1 5 

Chemists, originators of mysterious sub- 
stances, producers of combinations and ma- 
terials that had escaped all other ken. 

Botanists, naming, describing, and classify, 
ing all plant life. 

Naturalists,following each beast to its lair and 
capturing every fish of the sea, and mastering 
and analyzing their habits and structure. 

Ornithologists, familiar with all bird life, 
drawing, coloring, and describing with detail 
and perfection. 

Mathematicians, solving problems so intri- 
cate and abstruse that few persons understand 
the formulae they use. 

, Inventors, who in the service of mankind 
harnessed and utilized the most dangerous, 
occult, and subtle forces of nature. 

All these are true and knightly men, and 
many bear the title. Each wields his own 
battle-ax, lance, or broadsword, and, as he 
throws the gauntlet down, his challenge rings 
out loud and clear and strong. 



Cbampions from tbe (Bovernmental 
Morlo. 




1 > : VV 1 I) G. I AKKACl'T. 



FROM THE GOVERNMENTAL WORLD. 1 9 



CHAPTER II. 
Champions from the Governmental "World* 

STATESMEN, PATRIOTS, JURISTS, GENERALS, AND 
ADMIRALS. 

Count Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, 
statesman, was born at Schonhausen April 1, 
1815. 

He is the most noted German statesman of 
the century, and one of the most noted of all 
time. He served as ambassador to Russia 
and France, had much to do with the creation 
and establishment of the German empire, and 
became chancellor of the same. 

In a debate in 1847 he said: " For me the 
words, ' by the grace of God,' affixed by 
Christian rulers to their names, form no empty 
sound ; but I see in the phrase the acknowl- 
edgment that princes desire to sway the 
scepter, intrusted to them by the Almighty, 
according to God's will on earth. I, however, 
can only recognize as the will of God that 
which is contained in the Christian gospels." ' 

1 Life of Bismarck. By J. G. L. Hesekiel. London : J. 
Hogg & Son. 1S70. Page 155. 



20 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

At another time he wrote: " I would to God 
that, besides what is known to the world, I 
had not other sins upon my soul, for which I 
can only hope for forgiveness in a confidence 
upon the blood of Christ. . . . Among the 
multitude of sinners who are in need of the 
glory of God I hope that his grace will not 
deprive me of the staff of humble faith, in the 
midst of the dangers and doubts of my 
calling, by which I endeavor to find out my 
path." l 

William Ewart Gladstone, statesman, was 
born at Liverpool December 29, 1809. 

In 1832, when only twenty-three years of 
age, he became a member of the English Par- 
liament, and has repeatedly served as prime 
minister. 

He is a famous orator, and noted as an 
author on a variety of difficult subjects. 

In one of his articles he says : " If we survey 
with care and candor the present wealth of 
the world — I mean its w T ealth intellectual, 
moral, and spiritual — we find that Christianity 
has not only contributed to the patrimony of 
man its brightest and most precious jewels, 
but has likewise been, what our Saviour pro- 

1 Life of Bismaj-ck. By J. G. L. Hesekiel. London : J. 
Hogg & Son. 1870. Page 358. 



FROM THE GOVERNMENTAL WORLD. 2 1 

nounced it, the salt, or preserving principle, of 
all the residue." l 

" Whether we refer to the Scriptures or to 
the collateral evidence of history and of the 
Church, we find it to be undeniable as a fact 
that Christianity purports to be, not a system of 
moral teaching only, but, in vital union there- 
with, a system of revealed facts concerning the 
nature of God and his dispensations toward 
mankind. Upon these facts, which center in 
our Lord and Saviour, moral teaching is to rest, 
and to these it is indissolubly attached.*' 2 

George Washington, patriot, president, states- 
man, and general, was born in Westmoreland 
County, Va., February 22, 1732, and died De- 
cember 14, 1799. 

As general, commanding the armies of the 
colonies in the Revolution, and as the first 
President of the United States, he commended 
and endeared himself to the entire nation, and 
in private, as well as in public, life was a 
model citizen. 

In his Orderly Book, under date of July 
9, 1776, he says : " The blessing and protection 
of Heaven are at all times necessary, but espe- 

1 Gleanings of Past Years. By Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, 
M.P. New York : Chas. Scribner'b Sons. Vol. vii, page 78. 
9 Ibid. Vol. vii, page 184. 



22 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

daily so in times of public distress and danger. 
The general hopes and trusts that every officer 
and man will endeavor to live and act as be- 
comes a Christian soldier defending the dearest 
rights and liberties of his country." J 

In a letter, dated August 20, 1778, in speaking 
of the war, he used these words : " The hand of 
Providence has been so conspicuous in all this 
that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks 
faith, and worse than wicked that has not grati- 
tude enough to acknowledge his obligations." 1 

In a circular letter to the governors of the 
States, on the disbanding of the army, he says : 
" I now make my earnest prayer that God 
would have you and the State over which you 
preside in his holy protection, . . . and that 
he would be most graciously pleased to dispose 
us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to de- 
mean ourselves with that charity, humility, 
and pacific temper of mind which were the 
characteristics of the divine Author of our 
blessed religion. " 3 

Guiseppe Garibaldi, patriot, was born at 
Nice July 4, 1807, anc * died June 2, 1882. 
His history is remarkable. A sailor by 

1 The Writings of George Washington. By Jared Sparks. 
Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 1858. Vol. xii, page 401. 

2 Ibid. Vol. xii, page 402. 3 Ibid. Vol. xii, page 403. 



FROM THE GOVERNMENTAL WORLD. 23 

education, he became a noted general, and on 
both sea and land was recognized as almost 
invincible. For many years he aided patriot 
forces in South America, and subsequently 
visited the United States. Returning to Italy, 
he became a conspicuous leader and important 
factor in promoting and establishing the 
present constitutional kingdom of Italy. 

His autobiography says : " To the piety of 
my mother, to her beneficent and charitable 
nature, do I not perhaps owe that little love 
of country which has gained for me the 
sympathy and affection of my good but 
unfortunate fellow-citizens? ... I have be- 
lieved in the efficacy of her prayers/' ' 

On delivering certain flags to the Hungarian 
Hussars in Naples, he said : " I am a Christian, 
and I speak to Christians. I am a good Chris- 
tian, and speak to good Christians. I love and 
venerate the religion of Christ, because Christ 
came into the world to deliver humanity from 
slavery, for which God has not created it." 2 

Sir William Blackstone, jurist, was born in 
London July 10, 1723, and died February 14, 
1780. 

1 Life of General Garibaldi. By Theodore Dwight. New 
York : Derby & Jackson. 1861. Page 14. 
*lbid. Page 444. 



24 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

He was professor of law at Oxford, wrote 
on various subjects, but is chiefly known as 
the author of Commentaries on English Law, 
which contain the fundamental principles of 
English jurisprudence — a work so complete 
that no other has displaced it. In this work 
he says : " Considering the Creator only as a 
being of infinite power, he was able unquestion- 
ably to have prescribed whatever laws he 
pleased to his creature, man, however unjust 
or severe. But, as he is also a being of infinite 
wisdom, he has laid down only such laws as 
were founded in those relations of justice that 
existed in the nature of things antecedent to 
any positive precept. . . . He has so intimately 
connected, has so inseparably interwoven the 
laws of eternal justice with the happiness of 
each individual, that the latter cannot be at- 
tained but by observing the former ; and, if the 
former be punctually obeyed, it cannot but in- 
duce the latter." ' 

" The belief in a future state of rewards and 
punishments, the entertaining just ideas of the 
moral attributes of the Supreme Being, and a 
firm persuasion that he superintends and will 
finally compensate every action in human life 

1 Commentaries on the Laws of England. By Sir William 
Blackstone, Knt. Portland: T. B. Wait & Co. 1807. Book 
1, pages 40, 41. 



FROM THE GOVERNMENTAL WORLD. 2$ 

(all of which are clearly revealed in the doc- 
trines and forcibly inculcated by the precepts of 
our Saviour Christ) — these are the grand foun- 
dations of all judicial oaths, which call God to 
witness the truth of those facts which perhaps 
may be only known to him and the party at- 
testing; all moral evidence therefore, all con- 
fidence in human veracity, must be weakened 
by apostasy and overthrown by total infi- 
delity." x 

Joseph Story, jurist, was born at Marble- 
head, Mass., September 18, 1779, and died 
September 10, 1845. 

He served as one of the justices of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, was pro- 
fessor of law at Harvard University, and was 
the author of numerous important decisions 
and of various law volumes. 

In a charge to a grand jury in Boston, he 
said : " We believe in the Christian religion. 
It commands us to have good will to all 
men, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and 
to do unto all men as we would they should 
do unto us. It declares our accountability to 
the supreme God for all our actions, and holds 

1 Commentaries on the Laws of England. By Sir William 
Blackstone, Knt. Portland : T. B. Wait & Co. 1S07. Book 
4. page 43. 



26 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

out to us a state of future rewards and punish- 
ments as the sanction by which our conduct is 
to be regulated. ,, ' 

His inaugural address on the opening of 
the Dane Law School says : " One of the 
beautiful boasts of our municipal jurispru- 
dence is that Christianity is a part of the 
common law, from which it seeks the sanction 
of its rights, and by which it endeavors to 
regulate its doctrines. . . . There never has 
been a period in which the common law did 
not recognize Christianity as lying at its foun- 
dations." a 

In a letter to his wife he says : " Why men 
cannot rest satisfied with the common princi- 
ples of evidence, by which all human con- 
cerns are regulated, to govern them in relation 
to divine things I confess myself unable to 
see. . . . Christianity, it seems to me, is as 
conclusively established by an appeal to hu- 
man reason for its evidence and its truths, as it 
can be by appealing to the result of unknown 
powers supposed to be innate in the mind, 
which may be disputed, and have ever been in 
dispute." 3 

1 Life arid Letters of Joseph Story. By his son, W. W. 
Story. Boston : Little & Brown. 1851. Vol. i, page 341. 

2 Ibid. Vol. ii, page 8. 

3 Ibid. Vol. ii, page 285. 



FROM THE GOVERNMENTAL WORLD. 27 

Helmuth Karl Bernhard Von Moltke, gen- 
eral, was born at Parchim, Germany, October 
26, 1800, and died April 24, 1891. 

He is recognized as one of the greatest mili- 
tary strategists of either ancient or modern 
times. His victories over the Austrian and 
French armies gave evidence of his com- 
manding military skill. He was the re- 
cipient of many honors from the German 
emperor, and was made field marshal of the 
empire. 

On one occasion he said : " Christianity has 
raised the world from barbarism to civilization. 
Its influence has, in the course of centuries, 
abolished slavery, ennobled work, emancipated 
women, and revealed eternity. . . . The ker- 
nel of all religions is the morality they teach, 
of which the Christian is the purest and most 
far reaching." 1 

Ulysses Simpson Grant, general, was born 
at Point Pleasant, O., April 27, 1822, and died 
July 23, 1885. 

His name and fame, as the most success- 
ful soldier in the war with the South, and 
as a wise, patriotic, and judicious President of 

1 Moltke, His Life and Character. Translated by Mary 
Herms. New York : Harper & Brothers. 1892, Pages 328 
and 329. 



28 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the United States, are thoroughly established. 
His modesty and courage, his love of truth, 
and his endurance of mental and physical pain 
during the last months of his life endeared 
him to all the American people. 

His pureness in speech was remarkable, es- 
pecially so in view of the provocations of camp 
and garrison life. In his Memoirs he says : " 1 
am not aware of ever having used a profane ex- 
pletive in my life." ' 

In accepting from President Lincoln a com- 
mission as lieutenant general, he said : " I feel 
the full weight of the responsibilities now de- 
volving upon me, and I know that if they 
are met it will be due to these armies, and 
above all to the favor of that Providence which 
leads both nations and men." 2 

One of his old chaplains says : " Shortly 
after I came into the regiment our mess were 
one day taking their usual seats around the 
dinner table, when Colonel Grant remarked : 

"'Chaplain, when I was at home, and min- 
isters were stopping at my house, I always in- 
vited them to ask a blessing at the table. I 
suppose that a blessing is as much needed here 
as at home ; and if it is agreeable with your 

1 Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. New York : C. L. 
Webster & Co. 1885. Vol. i, page 106. 

2 Ibid. Vol. ii, page 115. 



FROM THE GOVERNMENTAL WORLD. 29 

views I should be glad to have you ask a bless- 
ing every time we sit down to eat.' " ' 

During his last illness, when Dr. Shrady 
asked him what he should say in the daily 
bulletin about his condition, he said : " I wish 
you would also express my gratitude and ap- 
preciation of the feeling that the people have 
shown for me in my sickness, and for the 
prayers that have been offered in my behalf. ,, * 

Robert Blake, admiral, was born at Bridge- 
water, England, August 15, 1599, and died 
August 17, 1657. 

He was a graduate of Oxford and an excel- 
lent Greek and Latin scholar. During his 
young manhood, and just prior to the admin- 
istration of Oliver Cromwell, the vice and folly 
of King Charles and his courtiers, and the 
moral laxity of the clergy, created general un- 
rest and dissatisfaction. Blake sided with the 
Puritans, or "Roundheads/' and became one 
of their most celebrated military commanders. 
His energy, intrepidity, and persistent courage 
have been seldom, if ever, excelled in any war 
or at any time. 

1 James L. Crane, late Chaplain 21st Illinois Infantry, U. 
S. V. In McClures Magazine for June, 1896. Page 43. 

2 Life and Public Services of U. S. Grant. By James 
Grant Wilson. New York : A. T. B. De Witt. 1885. Page 
117. 

3 



30 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

When the warfare was transferred from land 
to sea, and a bold and judicious officer was 
needed to command the fleet of the Common- 
wealth, they turned to Blake, as one who, 
though he had but slight knowledge of sea 
affairs, was so possessed by boldness and energy 
that he was deemed especially qualified for the 
position of admiral. 

He had large executive ability, and his over- 
sight extended to all naval matters, on shore 
and shipboard. He won notable victories 
over the pirates off the coast of Barbary, 
taught Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy to 
fear him, again and again defeated the Dutch 
fleet under Van Tromp, and for the first time 
established the naval supremacy of the English. 

While serving as commander in the army, 
he was besieged in Taunton, and those under 
him were reduced to great privation and dis- 
tress for want of food. On being summoned 
to surrender, Blake replied that he had not yet 
eaten his boots, and he should not dream of 
giving up the contest while he had so excel- 
lent a dinner to fall back upon ! At another 
time he said : " We wish you for time to 
come to desist from all overtures of the like 
nature unto us, who are resolved, to the last 
drop of our blood, to maintain the quarrel we 
have undertaken, and I doubt not but the same 



FROM THE GOVERNMENTAL WORLD. 3 1 

God who has hitherto protected us will bless 
us with an issue answerable to the justice of 
our cause ; however, to him alone shall we 
stand or fall." 2 

In one of his letters are these words : " We 
arrived yesterday, by a most merciful and good 
hand of Providence leading us, as it were, by 
the brink of destruction into safety. For 
which we, in our gratitude, have great cause 
everlastingly to praise the Lord for his won- 
derful goodness, and to rejoice in these, his 
salvations, with fear and trembling/' 3 

David Glasgow Farragut, admiral, was born 
in Knoxville, Tenn., July 5, 1801, and died 
August 14, 1870. 

In the capture of New Orleans and Mobile 
during the civil war in America he secured 
victories equal to those obtained by any other 
admiral, and the fleet which he commanded in 
sailing against New Orleans was the most pow- 
erful that ever sailed under the American flag. 

As a token of appreciation of his achieve- 
ments the merchants of New York presented 
him with $50,000 in government bonds, and 
Congress, in 1866, created the grade of admiral 

1 Life of Robert Blake. By Hepworth Dixon. London: 
Chapman & Hall. 1852. Page 78. 

2 Ibid. Page 280. 



32 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the United States navy and conferred the 
office upon Farragut. The following year he 
was placed in charge of the European squad- 
ron, and visited all the European ports and 
sovereigns. He dined with the Emperor of 
France,with the Grand Duke Constantine at St. 
Petersburg, and with his majesty, the King of 
Sweden; was received by Queen Victoria, and 
by Victor Emmanuel, of Italy, and was every- 
where feted and honored in an unusual manner. 

In his published letters the spirit of faith in 
and dependence upon God is very manifest. 
When stationed on the Mississippi he wrote 
to his wife and son as follows: "When we 
shall get down again is a question to be de- 
cided by time alone; but the same great God 
who has thus far preserved me will still preside 
over my destiny. In the course of human 
longevity I have not long to live ; and, although 
it would be most agreeable to spend it with 
you both, still it is our place to submit pa- 
tiently to his will and do our duty/' 1 

In a letter to his son, written from near 
Vicksburg, he says : " I trust in God for your 
safe arrival home to the embrace of your dear 
mother. . . . She knows that our lives are al- 
ways in the hands of a Supreme Ruler. . . . 

1 Life of David Glasgow Farragut. By Loyall Farragut. 
New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1879. Page 271. 



FROM THE GOVERNMENTAL WORLD. 33 

Do as little wrong as the weakness of your 
nature will permit, and as much good as you 
can Pray to God to give you good under- 
standing, and keep you from evil and protect 
you from harm." ' 

In another letter : " The worst of it is that 
people begin to think I fight for pleasure. God 
knows there is not a more humble poor creature 
in the community than myself. I shall go to 
church to-morrow and try to return suitable 
thanks for the many blessings that have been 
bestowed upon me." a 

1 Life of David Glasgow Farragut. By Loyall Farragut. 
New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1870. Page 355. 

2 Ibid. Page 365. 



Cbampions from tbe Social ano 
36u0inee0 Morlo. 




SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 



FROM SOCIAL AND BUSINESS WORLD. 37 



CHAPTER III. 
Champions from Social and Business "World* 

PHILANTHROPISTS, PHYSICIANS, SURGEONS, LAW- 
YERS, MERCHANTS, AND EXPLORERS. 

John Howard, philanthropist, was born at 
Hackney, England, September 2, 1726, and 
died January 20, 1790. 

Among all who have served the cause of hu- 
manity he stands first. Leaving the comforts 
of an elegant home he traveled from city to 
city in Europe and Asia, visiting almshouses, 
prisons, and jails innumerable, literally taking 
his life in his hands, in order that he might re- 
form abuses then existing in all places of de- 
tention. 

A passage in one of his letters says : " Jacob 
speaks of the angel who had been his guide in 
all his journeys and had delivered him from 
all his dangers ; and Jacob's God, I trust, 
is my God and my guide and my portion 
forever." 1 

In another place he says : " What is our pro- 

1 Howard, the PhilantJwopist. By John Stoughton. Lon- 
don: Hodder & Stoughton. 1884. Page 342. 



38 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

fession of religion if it does not affect our 
heart ? Shall I desert his cause ? O God, 
may I through divine grace persevere to the 
end ! My end, too, is approaching. My de- 
sire is to be washed, cleansed, and justified in 
the blood of Christ, and to dedicate myself 
to that Saviour who has bought us with a 
price." ' 

On his last departure from England he said 
to a friend: M We shall soon meet in heaven ; 
and the way to heaven from Grand Cairo is as 
near as from London." 2 

Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, 
philanthropist, was born in London April 28, 
1801, and died October 1, 1885. 

His gifts and labors among the poor and 
neglected conferred a thousandfold more honor 
upon him than all the titles earth could give. 

He threw aside political preferment, social 
power, and personal ease, that he might fur- 
ther the cause of humanity. 

He did more than any other philanthropist 
or legislator to elevate the working people. 
As a true labor reformer he was the means of 

1 Hozvard, the Philanthropist. By John Stoughton. Lon- 
don : Hodder & Stoughton. 1884. Page 343. 

2 Life of John Howard. By Rev. J. Field. London : 
Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans. 1850. Page 440. 



FROM SOCIAL AND BUSINESS WORLD. 39 

securing the cessation of the use of children 
as climbing chimney-sweeps, and also the 
respite of tens of thousands of children from 
severe labor in fields and factories. 

There was no subject pertaining to the re- 
ligious, educational, moral, or physical well- 
being of the people in his own land, and in 
many other lands as well, in which he did not 
interest himself; and, in one way or another, 
he came in contact with nearly all of the wise 
and good and great of his time. 

On the opening of Costers' Hall, in London, 
where he was to make an address, about 
twenty thousand of the hawkers, whom he 
had greatly befriended, met him a mile from 
the building and acted as an escort. 

While he was in Germany, the emperor in 
person paid him a visit. At his funeral there 
were representatives from over two hundred 
philanthropic, educational, religious, and work- 
ingmen's societies, with all of which he had 
been in some way identified. They formed a 
funeral pageant the like of which was never 
before seen. 

In 1871 he wrote in his diary as follows: 
" Try the Scriptures intellectually merely, and 
you will encounter no end of difficulties, and 
these difficulties will agitate and darken your 
moral and spiritual perception of the truth. 



40 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Try them by the heart, and you will find such 
a flood of comfort, conviction, and assurance 
that all difficulties will vanish." * 

In speaking on missions he said : " Neutral- 
ity in religion is impossible. A man must 
either believe or disbelieve. If he disbelieves 
he is an infidel, and that is the end of the mat- 
ter ; if he believes he is bound by every con- 
sideration of heaven and earth with all his soul, 
with all his heart, with all his mind to labor 
that the word of the Lord may have free 
course and be glorified. " a 

William Harvey, M.D., was born at Folke- 
stone, England, April i, 1578, and died June 
3, 1657. 

In addition to his wonderful discovery of 
the circulation of the blood, he was at the 
head of three departments of science, name- 
ly: comparative anatomy, physiology, and 
medicine. " When these scarcely had a be- 
ing he evolved them into living forms from 
chaos." 

11 He was used to say he never dissected the 
body of any animal without discovering some- 
thing which he had not expected or conceived 

1 Life and Works of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury-, By 
Edwin Hodder. London. 1886. Vol. iii, page 19. 
9 Ibid. Vol. iii, page 109. 



FROM SOCIAL AND BUSINESS WORLD. 4 1 

of, and in which he recognized the hand of an 
all-wise Creator." 1 

In his will he thus expressed himself: " I do 
most humbly render my soul to Him that gave 
it, and to my blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus 
Christ." a 

Edward Jenner, M.D., was born in Berkeley, 
England, May 17, 1749, and died January 26, 
1823. 

His discovery of vaccination as a preventive 
of smallpox marks a distinct era, not only in 
the treatment of that dread disease, but in 
general medical practice. 

As soon as his discovery was made known 
and demonstrated all nations sought to do 
him honor. The Emperor of Russia issued 
a special ukase with regard to the use of his 
discovery, and the King of Spain sent a surgeon 
all around the world to make it known in 
Spanish possessions. 

He was presented with innumerable addresses 
and medals by learned societies and by various 
cities and communities, accompanied with ex- 
pressions of great appreciation and gratitude. 

These words of praise have been supple- 
mented by myriads of individual testimonies, 

1 Eminent Doctors. By G. T. Bettany. London : John 
Hogg. Vol. i, page 48. 3 Ibid. Vol. i, page 46. 



42 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and it is undoubtedly true that his discovery 
saved millions of lives. Napoleon, in a spirit 
of gratitude, said of him, " We can refuse 
nothing to that man." 

On one occasion Dr. Jenner said : " I am not 
surprised that men are not thankful to me ; but 
I wonder that they are not grateful to God 
for the good which he has made me the instru- 
ment of conveying to my fellow-creatures." ' 

He had a great reverence for the Scriptures, 
presenting copies to various relatives. In one 
of them he wrote the name of the recipient, and 
expressed the hope that as this was the best 
book that ever was written, " she will give it not 
only the first place in her library, but convince 
those who love her dearly that it occupies the 
first place in her heart." 2 

At another time he remarked : " The sacred 
Scriptures form the only pillow on which the 
soul can find repose and refreshment/ ' 8 

Sir James Young Simpson, physician and 
surgeon, was born at Bathgate, Scotland, June 
7, 1811, and died May 6, 1870. 

When only eighteen years of age he gradu- 
ated from the Royal College of Surgeons at 

l Life of Edward Jenner. By John Baron, M.D., F.R.S. 
London : Henry Colburn. 1838. Vol. ii, page 295. 
"Ibid. Vol. ii, page 295. z Ibid. Vol. ii, page 446. 



FROM SOCIAL AND BUSINESS WORLD. 43 

Edinburgh, and four years later was made a 
member of the Royal Medical Society of the 
same place. He was subsequently appointed 
one of the queen's physicians, and speedily had 
an extensive clientele, with scores of titled pa- 
tients and a large general practice among all 
classes. His professional income eventually 
reached $50,000 per year. 

He is most widely known as being the first to 
bring into large practice the use of chloroform, 
and is recognized by many as its discoverer. 
His introduction of this anaesthetic, which has 
so greatly relieved all forms of sickness and 
surgery of the terror of pain, placed him in the 
very front rank with the benefactors of the 
human race. He wrote on many subjects con- 
cerning the medical profession, and was also a 
recognized authority on many archaeological 
matters. 

One of his addresses contains this sentence : 
" If, in your own lodgings in the dark watches 
of the night, you are troubled with a thought 
about your soul, if you hear some one knock- 
ing at your heart, listen. It is He who said 
eighteen hundred years ago upon the Sea of 
Galilee, * It is I, be not afraid/ Open the door 
of your heart. Say to him, i Come in/ In 
Christ you will find a Saviour, a companion, a 
counselor, a friend, a brother, who loves you 



44 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

with a love greater than human heart can con- 
ceive/' ' 

In writing to one of his sons who was ab- 
sent and about to return home he says : " And 
when you do come let me, as your loving father, 
say one thing more. At our family morning 
prayer I hope you will always be present, both 
to show your love to the King of kings and to 
be a fitting example to your two little, loving 
brothers. O, my own dear, dear Wattie, let 
you and I do all in our power to acknowledge 
Jesus as our King and Saviour, and strive to 
lead others to his feet and throne." 2 

David Hayes Agnew, physician and surgeon, 
was born at Noblesville, now Christiana, Pa., 
November 24, 18 18, and died March 22, 1892. 

He was graduated when twenty years of age 
at the University of Pennsylvania, was after- 
ward connected with various medical colleges, 
and attained world-wide fame as an anatomist 
and surgeon. In the most difficult and dan- 
gerous operations he used, with equal facility, 
either hand. He devised and secured the 
successful manufacture of a great variety of 
helpful surgical appliances, now known and 

x Memoir of Sir James Y. Simpson, Bart. By J. Duns, 
D.D., F.R.S.E. Edinburgh : Edmondston & Douglas. 1873. 
Page 425. 2 Ibid. Page 447. 



FROM SOCIAL AND BUSINESS WORLD. 45 

used throughout the profession. He was also 
one of the first to adopt antiseptic surgery. 

He wrote scores of articles for various med- 
ical and surgical journals, and is the author of 
Principles and Practice of Surgery, a work 
largely reprinted in Japanese. 

The spirit in which he practiced his profes- 
sion is indicated in the following letter to a 
clergyman who, after a course of treatment 
running through two years, was restored to 
health. In reply to a request for his bill Dr. 
Agnew wrote : " That I have been permitted 
to minister to your relief, and through the 
blessing of God on my efforts have been en- 
abled to be of help to you, is a source of great- 
est gratification to myself. You owe me noth- 
ing. To your Master and my own I owe all 
things, and to serve one of his poor, suffering 
messengers is but a little service rendered to 
him who gave himself for me. All I ask is 
that you pray for me ; that is the richest return 
that you can make." ' 

In one of his last letters he wrote : " Christ 
to me is all, and my aspiration is for the im- 
mortality to come." 3 

1 History of the Life of D. Hayes Agneit\ M.D. X L.L.D. 
By J. Howe Adams, M.D. Philadelphia and London: The 
F. H. Davis Company. 1892. Page 292. 

^Ibid. Page 351. 
4 



46 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Lord Thomas Erskine, lawyer, was born in 
Edinburgh January 10, 1750, and died Novem- 
ber 17, 1823. 

He served in the navy and army, and 
while on duty in the latter service attracted 
the attention of Justice Lord Mansfield, was 
led to study law, and in his very first plea he 
achieved a notable success, and soon became 
the most noted of advocates, the greatest in all 
England. 

In his speech on the prosecution of Wil- 
liams for publishing Paine's Age of Reason he 
said : " For my own part, gentlemen, I have 
been ever deeply devoted to the truths of 
Christianity; and my firm belief in the holy 
Gospel is by no means owing to the prejudices 
of education, though I was religiously educated 
by the best of parents, but has arisen from the 
fullest and most continued reflections of my 
riper years and understanding. It forms at 
this moment the great consolation of a life 
which, as a shadow, passeth away ; and with- 
out it I should consider my long course of 
health and prosperity too long, perhaps, and 
too uninterrupted to be good for any man, only 
as the dust which the wind scatters, and rather 
as a snare than as a blessing." ' 

1 Speeches by Lord Erskine. Edited by James L. High. 
Chicago: Callaghan & Company. 1S76. Vol. i, page 575. 



FROM SOCIAL AND BUSINESS WORLD. 47 

Daniel Webster, statesman and lawyer, was 
born at Salisbury, N. H., January 18, 1782, 
and died October 24, 1852. 

He served many years in the United States 
Senate, and was Secretary of State under Presi- 
dents Harrison, Tyler, and Fillmore. His 
commanding powers of intellect, powerful argu- 
ments, and masterful oratory, especially in the 
Dartmouth College and Girard will cases, and 
in his reply to Hayne in the United States 
Senate, will always be quoted for their learning 
and eloquence. 

During his last sickness, when giving " direc- 
tions about his will, he said that he had always 
liked the old fashion of commencing such in- 
struments with religious expressions, and with 
a recognition of one's dependence upon God." 
M Follow the old forms, " said he, " and do not 
let me go out of the world without acknowl- 
edging my Maker/' ' 

His biographer says that during this same 
illness, "as he was manifestly about to say 
something that ought to be preserved, I sat 
down at a table . . . and wrote down the 
words just as they fell from his lips. He said : 
4 My general wish on earth has been to do my 
Maker's will. I thank him for all the mercies 

1 Life of Daniel Webster. By George T. Curtis. New 
York : D. Appleton & Co. 1870. Vol. ii, page 6S9. 



48 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

that surround me. I thank him for the means 
he has given me of doing some little good. 
. . . The great mystery is Jesus Christ — the 
Gospel. What would be the condition of any 
of us if we had not the hope of immortal- 
ity? What ground is there to rest upon but 
the Gospel? . . . Thank God, the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to 
light." » 

William E. Dodge, merchant, was born at 
Hartford, Conn., September 4, 1805, an< ^ died 
February 9, 1883. 

He was an extensive dealer in metals, en- 
gaged in lumbering and coal-mining, and owned 
many thousands of acres of land in various 
States. He was one of the leading spirits in 
the building of the New York & Erie Rail- 
road, the Delaware, Lackawanna, & Western 
Railroad, the Houston & Texas Central Rail- 
road, and several others. He was president of 
several insurance companies, and a director in 
all the leading telegraph companies. 

With all his multiplied business interests 
he was actively interested in all forms of reli- 
gious philanthropy, and gave away millions of 
dollars to various benevolences. His whole 

1 Life of Daniel Webster. By George T. Curtis. New 
York : D. Appleton & Co. 1870. Vol. ii, page 697. 



FROM SOCIAL AND BUSINESS WORLD. 49 

life was saturated with the spirit and practice 
of a broad and generous Christianity, and he 
sought to control all the corporations with 
which he was connected in the interest of Sab- 
bath observance. 

In an address delivered in 1872 he said: 
" Unless we get an idea of what it is to be 
lost, we cannot know what it is to be saved. 
Jesus Christ came to seek and to save the 
lost. ... A saved sinner myself, I can de- 
clare that God desires not the death of the 
wicked. He says to all, ' Turn ye ; why will 
ye die?'" 1 

Sir George Williams, merchant of London, 
was born in Somersetshire, England, in 1821. 

In 1844, while employed in a large mercan- 
tile establishment in London, he, with other 
young men, founded the first Young Men's 
Christian Association in the world, and from 
the outset gave with large liberality in further- 
ance of the work. 

His entire career is exceedingly interesting, 
and an inspiration to young men. His home 
in London and his place of business at St. 
Paul's Churchyard are themselves reminders 
of old times and English worthies. The his- 

1 Memorial of William E. Dodge. By D. Stuart Dodge. 
New York : Anson D. F. Randolph & Co. Pages 208, 209. 



50 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tory of Mr. Williams was almost prophetically 
portrayed by Hogarth in his celebrated series 
of paintings of the " Industrious Apprentice/' 
Hogarth showed successively the industrious 
apprentice at work at the loom, attending 
church with his master's daughter, intrusted 
with keys and counting room, married to the 
daughter, becoming one of the firm, grown 
rich and elected sheriff, and finally Lord Mayor 
of London. 

Mr. Williams did not work at the loom, but 
he was an apprentice in a cloth house, was 
intrusted with his master's business, doubt- 
less attended church with the daughter, for he 
married her, became one of the firm and is 
still doing business at the old stand, has grown 
rich and influential, and is a millionaire mer- 
chant, modest and charitable, giving away 
thousands of pounds and unlimited time, and 
serving as chairman of over thirty philan- 
thropic and religious societies. In connection 
with the Jubilee Celebration of the Fiftieth 
Anniversary of the London Young Men's 
Christian Association and the World's Confer- 
ence of Associations held in London in 1894, 
he was the recipient of many honors and 
testimonials from various parts of the world, 
was presented with the freedom of the city of 
London by the corporation, the document be- 



FROM SOCIAL AND BUSINESS WORLD. 5 1 

ing inclosed in a magnificent casket. He was 
also knighted by the queen. 

At an international convention of Young 
Men's Christian Associations in Toronto, On- 
tario, he said : " The conversion of young men 
to God and their advancement in spiritual 
knowledge has been, and I trust ever will con- 
tinue to be, the great work of the Young 
Men's Christian Association. Since the found- 
ing of the first society in 1844, . . . the Bible 
class has been largely used in the conversion 
of young men. . . . The Bible class brings us 
into direct conflict with the work of the 
prince of darkness. The Holy Ghost says 
(2 Cor. 4. 4), * The god of this world hath 
blinded the minds of them which believe 
not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of 
Christ . . . should shine unto them.' . . . When 
the veil has been taken away from the 
mind and heart, and the truth of God has 
been seen and felt, then the tears of repent- 
ance have flowed and the cry for mercy has 
been heard. . . . No position can be more 
desired by young men than sitting at the 
feet of Christ in one of the Bible classes of an 
association and learning of him. ,, ' 

1 Report of the International Convention of the Young 
Mens Christian Associations, held at Toronto. Published by 
the Executive Committee at New York. 1876. Pages S2-84. 



52 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Sir Walter Raleigh, explorer, was born at 
Hayes, England, in 1552, and died October 
29, 1618. 

He was a soldier, sailor, historian, poet, 
courtier, and explorer. He intermeddled with 
adventures of many kinds, and the age in 
which he lived was full of him. He was the 
author of numerous works, and his writings 
show that he was familiar with all previous 
writers of note. 

In his History of tJte World he quotes 
extensively from both the Old and New 
Testaments. In the preface to this work he 
says: "I do also account it not the meanest, 
but an impiety monstrous, to confound God 
and nature, be it but in terms. . . . It is 
God that commandeth all ; it is nature that is 
obedient to all. It is God that doth good 
unto all, knowing and loving the good he 
doth ; it is nature that secondarily doth also 
good, but it neither knoweth nor loveth the 
good it doth. It is God that hath all things 
in himself; nature, nothing in itself.'' * 

In another place he uses this language: 
"There are none in the world so wickedly 
inclined but that a religious instruction and 
bringing up may fashion anew and reform 

1 Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, Kt. Oxford University 
Press. 1829. Vol. ii, page 57 of Preface. 



FROM SOCIAL AND BUSINESS WORLD. 53 

them ; nor any so well disposed whom (the 
reins being let loose) the continual fellowship 
and familiarity, and the example of dissolute 
men may not corrupt and deform." 1 

In his Treatise on the Soul he says : 
" When Christ saith, * Father, into thy hands 
I commend my spirit/ to the thief, 'This day 
shalt thou be with me in paradise;' when 
Stephen crieth, 4 Lord Jesus, receive my spirit/ 
and Paul, ' I desire to be dissolved and to be 
with Christ/ do they not show us that the soul 
is immortal ? And the immortality of the soul 
of Christ maketh much for the immortality of 
our souls, for he hath promised that where he 
is there his servants shall be also." 8 

Henry M. Stanley, explorer, was born near 
Denbigh, Wales, in 1840. 

As a fearless, courageous, and persistent ex- 
plorer of unknown and dangerous regions he has 
had no superior. His first great feat was the dis- 
covery of the whereabouts of the intrepid mis- 
sionary, David Livingstone. He subsequently 
made many important geographical discoveries, 
became governor of the Congo Free State, 
received the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford 

1 Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, Kt, Oxford University 
Press. 1829. Vol. ii, page 31. 

2 Ibid. Vol. viii, page 590. 



54 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

University, and innumerable other honors from 
sovereigns and learned societies. 

In a prefatory letter to Sir William Mac- 
Kinnon, contained in his work on Darkest 
Africa, he says : " You, who throughout your 
long and varied life have steadfastly believed 
in the Christian's God, and before men have 
professed your devout thankfulness for many 
mercies vouchsafed you, will better under- 
stand than many others the feelings which 
animate me when I find myself back again 
in civilization unimpaired in life or health, 
after passing through so many dark and dis- 
tressful periods. 

" Constrained at the darkest hour to hum- 
bly confess that without God's help I was 
helpless, I vowed a vow in the forest solitudes 
that I would confess his aid before men. A 
silence as of death was round about me ; it 
was midnight ; I was weakened by illness, 
prostrated with fatigue, and worn with anxiety 
for my white and black companions, whose 
fate was a mystery. 

" In this physical and mental distress I be- 
sought God to give me back my people. Nine 
hours later we were exulting with rapturous 
joy. In full view of all was the crimson flag 
with the crescent, and beneath its waving folds 
was the long-lost rear column. 



FROM SOCIAL AND BUSINESS WORLD. 55 

"As I mentally review the many grim epi- 
sodes, and reflect on the marvelously narrow 
escapes from utter destruction to which we 
have been subjected during our various jour- 
neys to and fro through the immense and 
gloomy extent of primeval wood, I feel utterly 
unable to attribute our salvation to any other 
cause than to a gracious Providence who, for 
some purposes of his own, preserved us." 1 

" Before turning in for the night I resumed 
my reading of the Bible as usual. I had al- 
already read the book through, from beginning 
to end, once, and was now at Deuteronomy 
for the second reading, and I came unto the 
verse where Moses exhorts Joshua in these 
fine lines : ' Be strong and of a good courage, 
fear not, nor be afraid of them : for the Lord 
thy God, he it is that doth go with thee ; 
he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee/ M 2 

x In Darkest Africa. By H. M. Stanley. C. Scribner's 
Sons. 1890. Vol. i, pages 2 and 4. 2 Ibid. Vol i, page 311. 



Cbampiona from tbe Hrtistic 
IKIlorlo. 




JOHN MILTON. 



FROM THE ARTISTIC WORLD. 59 



CHAPTER IV. 
Champions from the Artistic World* 

PAINTERS, ENGRAVERS, POTTERS, ARCHITECTS, AND 
COMPOSERS. 

Michael Angelo Buonarotti, sculptor, archi- 
tect, and painter, was born in Tuscany March 
6, 1475, and died at Rome February 18, 1564. 

In each of the three arts of sculpture, paint- 
ing, and architecture, he, like Shakespeare 
among the dramatists, was without a rival. 
Architect of St. Peter's, painter of " Conversion 
of St. Paul," sculptor of " Moses," his fame in- 
creases as the centuries roll on. 

In writing to his father about some domestic 
affairs he said : " We must have patience, and 
recommend ourselves to God, and try to ac- 
knowledge our errors, for which, and for no other 
reason, this adversity has fallen upon us, and 
especially for pride and ingratitude. . . . Live 
on, and if you are not to share in the honors 
of this world like other citizens, it is enough to 
have bread and to live in the faith of Christ, 
even as I do here, for I live humbly, nor 



60 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

do I care for the life nor the honors of this 
world/' ' 

Washington Allston, painter, was born at 
Waccamaw, South Carolina, November 5, 1779, 
and died July 9, 1843. 

He was one of the few American painters 
who achieved great fame in Europe. In Rome, 
because of the similarity of some of his color- 
ing to that of Titian, he was designated " the 
American Titian." In England every door 
was opened to him. He was a personal friend 
of Coleridge, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Benjamin 
West, Irving, and Bryant. 

During his lifetime, and while actively en- 
gaged in his profession, he sold single pictures 
for thousands of dollars, and had an order for 
one to cost $25,000. Among his paintings are 
11 Belshazzar's Feast " and the " Dead Man 
Revived by Touching the Bones of Elijah. " 

He was a most winning poet as well as an 
excellent painter. 

In one of his letters, in speaking of certain 
trials, he says: "I may grieve, but not repine. 
It becomes not a man of sense, nor a Chris- 
tian, to repine at what he cannot help. I have 
been schooled to patience and submission ; 

1 Life and Works of Michael Angelo Bttonarroti. By C. H. 
Wilson. London : John Murray. 1876. Page 185. 



FROM THE ARTISTIC WORLD. 6 1 

I endeavor to practice them as Christian du- 
ties/' ' 

On the death of his mother he wrote : " She 
is now with her Saviour. There is no conso- 
lation for the bereaved like this. Nor, indeed, 
can there be any other to a believing Christian. 
... I can now think of her as my blessed 
mother numbered with the * just made perfect/ 
where there is no more sorrow, no more trouble. 
... I cannot tell you, Cogdell, how I loved 
my mother ; she herself never knew all the love 
I bore her. She was the constant object of 
my daily prayers." 2 

Albert Diirer, engraver, was born at Nu- 
remburg May 21, 1471, and died April 6, 1528. 

He was not only an engraver, but a painter. 
He held the position of court painter to Charles 
V, and his picture of the " Four Apostles," in 
Munich, is evidence of his commanding ability. 
Of his engraved works " The Melancholia" 
and "Knight, Death, and the Devil" are 
deemed the most worthy. He was a personal 
friend of Luther and Melanchthon. 

In a letter to the chaplain of the Elector 
Frederick he says : " I pray your reverence, 

1 Life and Letters of Washington Ailston. By Jared B. 
Flagg. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1892. Page 
222. * Ibid. Pages 305, 306. 



62 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

therefore, to convey my very humble thanks 
to his electoral grace, and to commend to his 
grace in all humility the worthy Dr. Martinus 
Luther, for the sake of Christian truth, which 
is of greater moment to us than all the riches 
and power of this world, for that all passeth 
away, but the truth abideth forever. And if 
by the help of God I can but come to Dr. 
Martinus Luther I will paint his portrait with 
all diligence and engrave it on copper, for a 
lasting remembrance of this Christian man who 
has delivered me out of great perplexities." ' 

In his Netherlands Journal he inscribes this 
prayer : " We beseech thee, O heavenly Father^ 
to bestow thy Holy Spirit once more upon one 
[Wyclif] who will gather together again from 
all parts thy holy Christian Church, so that we 
may again live together in Christian unity, and 
that all unbelievers, such as Turks, heathens, 
and Indians, may turn willingly to us for the 
sake of our good works and accept the Chris- 
tian faith." a 

Thomas Bewick, naturalist and engraver, 
was born at Eltingham, England, in August, 
1753, and died November 8, 1828. 

1 Life and Works of Albert Dilrer. By M. Thausing. 
London : John Murray. 1 882. Vol. ii, page 234. 

2 Ibid. Page 238. 



FROM THE ARTISTIC WORLD. 63 

He is styled the father of modern wood 
engraving. Leslie's Handbook for Young 
Painters says of him : " The woodcuts that 
illustrate his book of natural history may be 
studied with advantage by the most ambitious 
votary of the highest classes of art." 

He says in his Memoirs: " It is sufficient for 
the soul of man in this life to reverence and 
adore the omnipresent and, except through 
his works, the unknowable God, whose wisdom 
and power and goodness have no bounds, and 
who has been pleased to enable his reasoning 
creatures so far to see that everything is made 
by design, and nothing by chance." ' 

Speaking of the Bible, he says : " It may be 
presumed that this original and sacred docu- 
ment will continue to arrest the attention of 
reasoning beings as long as men continue to 
reason, and be an eternal stimulant, together 
with other stimulants so abundantly presented 
by the wonders of the universe, to lead the 
soul to rest its hopes on the source from 
whence it derived its existence." 3 

Bernard Palissy, potter, was born near Agen, 
France, in 15 10, and died in 1589. 

1 Memoirs of Thomas Bewick. Written by Himself. Lon- 
don : Longmans, Green & Roberts. 1862. Page 260. 

2 Ibid. Tage 264. 



64 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

He was a great student of nature, and, in 
fact, of universal truth, and wrote upon a 
variety of subjects, including natural history, 
chemistry, and religion. He was very skillful 
in drawing and painting, but his reputation 
rests chiefly upon his discoveries in the making 
of ceramic ware and in the elegant productions 
of his own hands. His success in discovering 
the process of making white and colored en- 
amel wares was only achieved through a se- 
ries of experiments extending through several 
years, amid labors and poverty and discour- 
agements of almost every kind. When his 
means and courage to prosecute his experi- 
ments further would sometimes fail he would 
turn his attention to painting or surveying in 
order to support his family and gather a small 
amount for further experiments. Over and 
over again, just as he felt that success was al- 
most within his grasp, some unforeseen diffi- 
culty or disaster would intervene to prevent 
his success. 

Once when some of his wares were in the 
furnace his supply of wood gave out, and he 
burned up his fence, the tables in his house, 
and then tore up the floor and used it also; 
persevering in spite of all obstacles, building 
his own furnaces, grinding his own colors, and 
modeling his own wares, he finally triumphed. 



FROM THE ARTISTIC WORLD. 65 

His beautiful designs were eagerly purchased, 
and to this day are unexcelled, commanding 
fabulous prices. 

In 1585, because of his religious views, he 
was imprisoned in the Bastile. In 1588 Henry 
III visited him and said he had been com- 
pelled, in spite of himself, to put him in prison, 
and offered to pardon him if he would become a 
convert to the Romish faith. Palissy replied : 
" Sire, you have said several times that you 
feel pity for me. But it is I who pity you, 
who have said, ' I am compelled/ That is not 
speaking like a king. The Guisards, all your 
people, and yourself cannot compel a potter 
to bow down to images of clay." ' 

In one of his published articles, addressing 
his brethren, he says: "You will have enemies 
and be persecuted all the time of your life, if 
by direct paths you will follow and sustain the 
cause of God ; for such are the promises writ- 
ten originally in the Old and New Testament. 
Take refuge, then, under the shelter of your 
protecting Chief and Captain, our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who in time and place will know how 
properly to avenge the wrong that he has suf- 
fered and your sorrows/' a 

1 Life of Bernard Palissy. By Henry Morley. Boston : 
Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1853. Vol. ii, page 188. 

2 Ibid. Page 259. 



66 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Josiah Wedgwood, potter, was born in Burs- 
lem, England, July, 1730, and died January 3, 

1795- 

The Wedgwood w r are is perhaps the best 
known of any, and Wedgwood is usually desig- 
nated as the father of English pottery. He 
possessed rare chemical knowledge, coupled 
with great business ability, and made many 
important and useful discoveries, producing 
the highest quality of ceramic ware. 

Concerning him the following anecdote is 
related : 

An English peer once called upon him and 
desired to see his great pottery factories. With 
one of his employees, a lad about fifteen years 
of age, Mr. Wedgwood accompanied the noble- 
bleman through the works. 

The visitor was a man of somewhat reckless 
life, and rather vain of his religious unbelief. 
Possessing great natural wit, he was quite en- 
tertaining in conversation, and after a while 
forgot himself in expressions of " polite " pro- 
fanity and in occasional jests with sacred names 
and subjects. 

The boy at first was shocked by the noble- 
man's irreverence, but soon became fascinated 
by his flow of skeptical drollery, and laughed 
heartily at the witty points made. 

When the round of the factories had been 



FROM THE ARTISTIC WORLD. 67 

made the boy was dismissed, and Mr. Wedg- 
wood selected a beautiful vase of unique pattern 
and recalled the long and careful process of its 
making, as they had just seen it at the vats and 
ovens. The visitor was charmed with its ex- 
quisite shape, its rare colorings, its pictured 
designs, and reached out his hand to take it ; 
Mr. Wedgwood let it fall on the floor and 
broke it to atoms. The nobleman uttered an 
angry oath. " I wanted that for my collec- 
tion, " he said. " No art can restore what you 
have ruined by your carelessness.' * 

" My lord/' replied Mr. Wedgwood, " there 
are other ruined things, more precious than 
this, which can never be restored. You can 
never give back to the soul of that boy who 
has just left us the reverent feeling and 
simple faith which you have destroyed by 
making light of the religion which has been 
his most sacred memory and inheritance. For 
years his parents have endeavored to teach 
him reverence for sacred things, and so to in- 
fluence his mind that his life and conduct 
should be governed by religious principles. 
You have undone their labor in less than half 
an hour/' 

The nobleman, though greatly astonished at 
such plainness of speech from a "mechanic," 
respected a brave and honest man ; and he did 



68 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

not go away without expressing his regrets 
and admitting the justice of the reproof. ' 

Sir Christopher Wren, architect, was born 
at East Knoyle, England, October 20, 1632, 
and died February 25, 1723. 

After the great London fire of 1666 he was 
selected to rebuild fifty churches in that city, 
and in connection therewith he designed and 
erected St. Paul's and an addition to West- 
minster Abbey. 

He possessed much ability in several de- 
partments of science, and served as Professor 
of Astronomy at Oxford. He was buried in 
the crypt at St. Paul's. The notable inscrip- 
tion therein reads, " Si monumentum requiris 
circumspice " — " If you require a monument, 
look around you." 

During the erection of St. Paul's he caused 
the following notice to be affixed in many 
parts of the building: 

" Whereas, among laborers, etc., that un- 
godly custom of swearing is too frequently 
heard, to the dishonor of God and contempt 
of authority; and to the end, therefore, that 
such impiety may be utterly banished from 
these works, intended for the service of God 
and the honor of religion, it is ordered that 
1 Youth's Coi?ipanion, Boston, Mass., July 5, 1894. 



FROM THE ARTISTIC WORLD. 69 

customary swearing shall be a sufficient crime 
to dismiss any laborer that comes to the call, 
and the clerk of the works, upon sufficient 
proof, shall dismiss him accordingly ; and if 
any master working by task shall not, upon 
admonition, reform this profanation among 
his apprentices, servants, and laborers, it shall 
be construed his fault, and he shall be liable 
to be censured by the commissioners." ' 

Sir George Gilbert Scott, architect, was born 
at Gawcott, near Buckingham, England, July 
13, 181 1, and died March 27, 1878. 

In furthering the revival of Gothic archi- 
tecture he was, perhaps, the most important 
factor. He was charged with the care and 
restoration of Westminster Abbey, was in 
large part connected with the restoration of 
the cathedrals of Ely, Gloucester, Durham, 
Chester, Worcester, Lichfield, Ripon, Exeter, 
and many others, and was also the designer 
of the Albert Memorial. He was buried in 
Westminster Abbey. 

In speaking of his devotions he says : 
11 When I am praying, especially for my sons, 
I feel I cannot do enough. I feel kneeling to 
be but little, and I prostrate myself on the 

1 Sir Christopher Wren. By Lucy Phillimore. London : 
C Kegan Paul & Co. 1883. Page 285. 



yo CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

floor." 1 On another occasion he said: "O 
that I had availed myself of the many privi- 
leges of those my early days, of their religious 
opportunities and of their means of intellectual 
improvement ! But regrets are unavailing. 
Let me rather thank God for my pious and 
excellent parents, and for the many blessings 
of my life, and crave his forgiveness for my 
negligence and shortcomings." 2 

He also bears this testimony : " Without 
pious faith, without warm love and a heartfelt 
devotedness, never and nowhere was anything 
truly great or holy accomplished." 3 

George Frederick Handel, musical composer, 
was born at Halle, Lower Saxony, February 
23, 1685, and died April 14, 1759. 

Haydn said of him, " He is the father of us 
all." Mozart said, " He knows better than 
any one of us what is capable of producing 
a great effect." Beethoven said Handel was 
the " monarch of the musical kingdom, . . . 
the greatest composer that ever lived." 

While he produced many wonderful compo- 
sitions, his "Messiah" is the most notable. In 

1 Personal and Professional Recollections of Sir George 
Gilbert Scott, R.A, Edited by his son. London : Sampson 
Low & Co. 1879. Page 20 of Introduction. 

2 Ibid, Page 52. 3 Ibid, Pages 144, 145. 



FROM THE ARTISTIC WORLD. 7 1 

speaking of the feeling and impression that he 
had when composing that great oratorio he 
said, a I did think I saw all heaven before me, 
and the great God himself." l 

After the death of his mother he wrote: " I 
cannot yet restrain my tears. But it has 
pleased the Most High to enable me to submit 
with Christian calmness to his holy will/* * 

For several years before his death he at- 
tended the parish church and was fervently 
devout. His death on Good Friday was a 
fulfillment of his desire. " He had most se- 
riously and devoutly wished for several days 
before his death that he might breathe his 
last on Good Friday, * in hopes/ he said, ' of 
meeting his good God, his sweet Lord and 
Saviour, on the day of his resurrection/ " 3 

Joseph Haydn, musical composer, was born 
at Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732, and died 
May 31, 1809. 

His musical creations marked an era in the 
art of composition. Even Mozart admitted 
that it was from Haydn that he first learned 
to write quartette music. Haydn wrote many 
famous pieces, but his oratorio of " The Cre- 

1 Life of George Frederick Handel. By W. S. Rock st 10. 
London: Macmillan & Co. 1883. Page 239. 

2 Ibid. Page 162. 3 Ibid. Page 362. 



>]2 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ation" is sufficient of itself to give him 
enduring fame. 

In a letter, written in 1792, he says: " In 
order to keep my word and support poor 
Solomon [his former manager] I must be the 
victim and work incessantly. I really feel it. 
My eyes suffer the most, my mind is very 
weary, and it is only the help of God that will 
supply what is wanting in my power. I daily 
pray to him, for without his assistance I am 
but a poor creature." x 

1 Life of Haydn, By Louis Nolil. Translated by G. P. 
Upton. Chicago: A. C. MacClurg & Co. 1888. Page 127. 



Champions from tbe Xlteran? 
Morlo. 




SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 



CHAPTER V. 
Champions from the Literary World* 

PRINTERS, EDITORS, PHILOLOGISTS, EGYPTOLOGISTS, 
LEXICOGRAPHERS, HISTORIANS, POETS, NOVELISTS. 

John Gutenberg, inventor and printer, was 
born at Mentz, Germany, in 1398, and died be- 
tween 1465 and 1468. 

That he was the real inventor of movable 
types and typography as now practiced, no 
candid investigator can now doubt. His first 
works worthy of the name of books were two 
editions of the Bible, but he was so modest 
that, as DeVinne says, " No one except 
Shakespeare did so much and said so little 
about it." 

In his Catholicon, published in 1460, he says: 
" By the assistance of the Most High, at whose 
will the tongues of children become eloquent, 
and who often reveals to babes what he hides 
from the wise, this renowned book, the Catliol- 
icon [a Latin grammar and dictionary], was 
printed and perfected in the year of incarna- 
tion, 1460, in the beloved city of Mentz (which 
belongs to the illustrious German nation, and 



?6 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. ' 

which God has consented to prefer and to raise 
with such an exalted light of the mind and of 
free grace above the other nations of the earth), 
not by means of pen or pencil or stencil plate, 
but by the admirable proportion, harmony, and 
connection of the punches and matrices. 
Wherefore, to thee, divine Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, triune and only God, let praise 
and honor be given. " l 

William Caxton, printer, was born at Kent, 
England, in 1412, and died in 1491 or 1492. 

He was the first printer in England, and was 
not only a printer, but a writer as well. His 
works show that he had a deep sense of reli- 
gious things. 

In his Life of Charles the Great, printed in 
1485, he says : " I have specially reduced [trans- 
lated] it after the simple cunning that God hath 
lent to me, whereof I humbly and with all my 
heart thank him, and also am bounden to pray 
for my father's and mother's souls, that in my 
youth sent me to school, by which, by the 
sufferance of God, I get my living, I hope 
truly. And that I may do so and continue, I 
beseech him to grant me of his grace ; and so 
to labor and occupy myself virtuously that I 

1 The Invention of Printing. By Theodore L. DeVinne. 
New York : Francis Hart & Co. 1876. Page 435. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 77 

may come out of death and deadly sin, that 
after this life I may come to his bliss in 
heaven/ 5 l 

Josiah Gilbert Holland, essayist, poet, nov- 
elist, and editor, was born at Belchertown, 
Mass., July 24, 1819, and died October 12, 
1881. 

He was an American author of the very 
purest type, and if his abilities were measured 
by the circulation of his writings and the per- 
sonal esteem which he evoked he would have 
few equals. 

As editor of the Springfield Republican, and 
afterward of Scribners and the Century maga- 
zines, he was brilliantly successful. 

As a poet he produced successive books of 
poems which sold by tens of thousands of 
copies before the day of publication. As an 
author of timely moral and social homilies he 
was read with avidity by all classes ; as a 
lecturer he was one of the most popular that 
ever appeared on the American platform ; and 
as a novelist and author of Sevenoaks, Nich- 
olas Minturn, and Arthur Bonnicastle he was 
full of true, healthful, helpful, and useful 
thoughts. 

1 Life of William Caxton. By Charles Knight. London : 
W. Clowes & Sons. 1877. Page 13. 
G 



78 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

In his Every-Day Topics he says: "In the 
current discussions of the relations of Chris- 
tianity to science there is one fact that seems 
to have dropped out of notice, yet it is full of 
meaning, and deserves, for Christianity's sake, 
to be raised and kept before the public. Who, 
or what, has raised science to its present com- 
manding position? What influence is it that 
has trained the investigator, educated the 
people, and made it possible for the scientific 
man to exist, and the people to comprehend 
him ? Who built Harvard College ? What mo- 
tives form the very foundation stones of Yale? 
To whom and to what are the great institutions 
of learning scattered all over this country in- 
debted for their existence? There is hardly 
one of these that did not have its birth in, and 
has not had its growth from, Christianity. The 
founders of all these institutions, more partic- 
ularly those of greatest influence and largest 
facilities, were Christian men, who worked sim- 
ply in the interest of their Master." 1 

" It is most interesting and instructive, we 
repeat, to observe how all the patent methods 
that have been adopted outside of or in oppo- 
sition to Christianity for the reformation of 
society have, one after another, gone to the 

1 Every-Day Topics. By J. G. Holland. New York : 
Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1876. Pages 141, 142. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 79 

wall or gone to the dogs. A dream and a 
few futile or disastrous experiments are all 
that ever comes of them. " 1 

William Cullen Bryant, poet and editor, was 
born at Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794, 
and died June 12, 1878. 

He was chief editor of the New York Even- 
ing Post for almost fifty years, and made the 
paper notable for literary character and ele- 
vated tone. His " Thanatopsis M is recognized 
as one of the great poems of the age. He 
was also the author of many other highly 
prized poems. 

In a letter to Miss C. M. Sedgwick, in 
speaking of the death of her mother, he says : 
" I was very much struck not long since with 
the answer of one to whom the prospect of life 
seemed uncertain, and whom I was endeavor- 
ing to console with the hope of a happier 
state of existence. ' It will be no heaven to 
me/ she said, ' if my friends are not there.* . . . 
The delights of the next life, I am sure, are 
not selfish ; they must be social. i I go to 
prepare a place for you,' said our Saviour to 
his disciples. The good who precede us in 
death have all this office ; it is their presence 

1 Every-Day Topics. By J. G. Holland. New York : 
Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1876. Page 154. 



80 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which will make a great part of the heaven 
for which we hope." M 

In a letter to Bishop J. H. Vincent he 
says : " There is an attempt to make science, 
or a knowledge of the laws of the natural 
universe, an ally of the school which denies 
a separate spiritual existence and a future life ; 
in short, to borrow of science weapons to be 
used against Christianity. The friends of 
religion, therefore, confident that one truth 
never contradicts another, are doing wisely 
when they seek to accustom the people at 
large to think and weigh evidence, as well as 
to believe. ... It is true that there is no 
branch of human knowledge so important as 
that which teaches the duties we owe to God 
and to each other." 2 

Friedrich Max Miiller, philologist, was born 
at Dessau, Germany, December 6, 1823. 

He is probably best known by his works 
entitled Chips from a German Workshop and 
Lectures on the Science of Language. His 
most elaborate and learned work, however, is 
his translation of the Rig Veda Samhita, a 
collection of Sanskrit hymns that introduces 

1 Biography of William Cullen Bryant. By Parke Godwin. 
New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1883. Vol. ii, page 91. 

2 Ibid. Page 395. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 8 1 

us to the very earliest form of words and 
thoughts. 

In a lecture on missions he says: "As to 
our own religion, its very soul is missionary, 
progressive, world-embracing ; it would cease 
to exist if it ceased to be missionary — if it 
disregarded the parting words of its Founder: 
' Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, bap- 
tizing them in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost?" 1 

u As long as there are doubt and darkness 
and anxiety in the soul of an inquirer, reti- 
cence may be his natural attitude. But when 
once doubt has yielded to certainty, darkness 
to light, anxiety to joy, the rays of truth will 
burst forth ; and to close our hand or to shut 
our lips would be as impossible as for the 
petals of a flower to shut themselves against 
the summons of the sun of spring." 8 

" A missionary must know no fear; his 
heart must overflow with love — love of man, 
love of truth, love of God ; and in this, the 
highest and truest sense of the word, every 
Christian is, or ought to be, a missionary." * 

1 Selected Essays on Language, Mythology, and Religion. By 
F. Max Mliller. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 18S1. 
Vol. ii, page 53. 

2 Ibid. Page 55. 

3 J bid. Page 5 7. 



82 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Archibald Henry Sayce, archaeologist and 
philologist, was born at Shirehampton, Eng- 
land, in 1846. 

He has been Professor of Comparative Philol- 
ogy at Oxford, and is an author of recognized 
authority on several branches of archaeology. 

In the Preface to one of his works he says: 
" The later history of the Old Testament no 
longer stands alone. Once it was the sole 
witness for the truth of the narrative it 
contains. . . . All is changed now. The 
earth has yielded up its secrets, the current 
civilization of Assyria has stepped forth again 
into the light of day and has furnished us 
with records, the authority of which none can 
deny. . . . Just at the moment when skep- 
tical criticism seemed to have achieved its 
worst, and to have resolved the narratives of 
the Old Testament into myths or fables, God's 
providence was raising up from the grave of 
centuries a new and unimpeachable witness 
for their truth." ■ 

In his work on Higher Criticism, his 
testimony is that " the assumptions and 
preconceptions with which the ' higher criti- 
cism 9 started, and upon which so many of its 

1 Assyria; its Princes, Priests, and People. By A. H. 
Sayce, M.A. London : The Religious Tract Society. 1885. 
Pages 10 and 1 1 of Preface. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 83 

conclusions are built, have been swept away 
either wholly or in part, and in place of the 
skepticism it engendered there is now a danger 
lest the oriental archaeologist should adopt too 
excessive a credulity. The revelations of the 
past which have been made to him in late 
years have inclined him to believe that there is 
nothing impossible in history, any more than 
there is in science, and that he is called upon 
to believe, rather than to doubt." l 

Richard Lepsius, Egyptologist, was born at 
Naumburg, Germany, December 23, 18 10, and 
died July 10, 1884. 

He was one of the greatest specialists on 
Egypt. He unraveled the chronology and 
mythology of that ancient land, unfolded its 
system of weights and measures, and studied 
out and classified almost all the ancient and 
modern languages of northeastern Africa. 

His writings are numerous, embracing scores 
of volumes, and they give many evidences of 
his belief in the Bible. In the dedication of his 
work on The Chronology of the Egyptians he 
says: " The Christianity which derives its 
origin and sustenance from the Bible is essen- 

1 The Higher Criticis?7i and the Verdict of the Monuments* 
By A. H. Sayce. London : Society for Promoting Christian 
Knowledge. 1894. Page 23. 



84 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tially and intrinsically wholly independent of all 
learned confirmation. . . . That truth which is 
discerned by the sound progress of any science 
whatsoever cannot be hostile to Christian truth, 
but must promote it; for all truths, from the 
very beginning, have formed a compact league 
against everything that is false and erroneous. 
... It seems to me, also, that the practical 
religious meaning which the Old Testament 
possesses for every Christian reader is very in- 
dependent of the dates of the periods, the exact 
knowledge of which could only have been 
known by means of a purposeless inspiration to 
the authors and elaborators of those writings, 
many of whom lived several centuries later." 1 

Georg Ebers, Egyptologist, was born in Ber- 
lin March I, 1837. 

He is most widely known through transla- 
tions of his historic novels, Uarda, Joshua, and 
An Egyptian Princess. He is also the author 
of Through Goshen to Sinai, and Egypt and the 
Books of Moses. He has served as Professor of 
Egyptology at Jena and Leipsic. 

In his Story of My Life he says : " My 
mother did not fail to endeavor to inspire us 

1 Letters from Egypt \ Ethiopia, etc., with extracts from his 
Chronology of the Egyptians. By Dr. Richard Lepsius. Lon- 
don : Henry G. Bohn. 1853. Pages 361, 362. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 85 

with love for the Christ-child and the Saviour 
and to draw us near to him. She saw in him, 
above all else, the embodiment of love, and 
loved him because her loving heart understood 
his. 

" In after years my own investigation and 
thought brought me to the same conviction 
which she had reached through the relation of 
her feminine nature to the person and teach- 
ings of her Saviour. I perceived that the 
world as Jesus Christ found it owes him 
nothing grander, more beautiful, loftier, or 
more pregnant with importance than that he 
widened the circle of love which embraced only 
the individual, the family, the city, or, at the 
utmost, the country of which a person was a 
citizen, till it included all mankind. And this 
human love, of which my mother's life gave us 
practical proof, is the banner under which all 
the genuine progress of mankind, in later years, 
has been made. 

"Nineteen centuries have passed since the 
one that gave us Him who died on the cross ; 
and how far we are still from a perfect realiza- 
tion of this noblest of all the emotions of the 
heart and spirit ! " ' 

1 The Story of My Life. By Georg Ebers. Translated by 
Mary J. Safford. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1893. 
Pages 29, 30. 



86 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

He said of one of his teachers : " He showed 
us the other religions mainly to place Chris- 
tianity and its renewing and redeeming power 
in a brighter light. . . . Whether he succeeded 
in bringing us into complete ' unity' with the 
personality of Christ, to which he stood in such 
close relations, is doubtful, but he certainly 
taught us to understand and love him ; and 
this love, though I have also listened to the 
views of those who attribute the creation and 
life of the world to mechanical causes and 
believe the Deity to be a product of the human 
intellect, has never grown cold up to the 
present day." l 

Samuel Johnson, essayist and lexicographer, 
was born at Lichfield, England, September 
18, 1709, and died December 13, 1784. 

His erudition made him not only one of the 
greatest men of his time, but of all time, and 
his moral essays and stories, contained in the 
Rambler and elsewhere, are among the world's 
best and greatest classics. His dictionary 
comes near being the " source of English un- 
defiled," and it is worthy of particular notice 
that in it he quoted no author whose writings 

1 The Story of My Life. By Georg Ebers. Translated 
by Mary J. Safford. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 1893. 
Pages 240, 241. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 87 

had a tendency to hurt religion or morality. 
In his day, and, in fact, ever since, even the 
words that unbelievers use have had to be 
obtained from vocabularies collated by Chris- 
tian men. 

The following passage is from his diary: 
" September 7, 1736. I have this day entered 
upon my twenty-eighth year; mayest thou, O 
God, enable me, for Jesus Christ's sake, to 
spend this in such a manner that I may re- 
ceive comfort from it at the hour of death and 
in the day of judgment. Amen." * 

Soon after 1763, when the English wrested 
Canada from the French, while conversing with 
a friend on the truth of Christianity, Dr. John- 
son said : " It is always easy to be on the 
negative side. . . . Let us try this a little 
further. I deny that Canada is taken, and I can 
support my denial by pretty good arguments. 

" The French are a much more numerous 
people than we, and it is not likely that they 
would allow us to take it. 

" i But the ministry have assured us, in all 
the formality of the Gazette, that it is taken.' 

"Very true, but the ministry have put us 
to an enormous expense by the war in America, 

1 Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. By James Boswcll. 
London : Printed by Henry Baldwin. 1840. Vol. i, page 
24. 



88 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and it is to their interest to persuade us that 
we have got something for our money. 

" ' But the fact is confirmed by thousands of 
men who were at the taking of it.' 

" Ay, but these men have still more interest 
in deceiving us. They don't want that you 
should think the French have beat them, but 
that they have beat the French. 

" Now, suppose you should go over and find 
that it really is taken, that would only satisfy 
yourself; for when you came home we would 
not believe you. We would say you have been 
bribed. 

" Yet, sir, notwithstanding all these plausible 
objections, we have no doubt that Canada is 
really ours, such is the weight of common tes- 
timony. How much stronger are the evidences 
of the Christian religion ! " ' 

Noah Webster, lexicographer, was born in 
West Hartford, Conn., October 16, 1758, and 
died May 28, 1843. 

It was his personal efforts in various States 
that secured the first copyright law in the 
United States, which since that time has pro- 
tected the rights of authors, and for this rea- 
son alone he deserves the warmest remem- 

1 Life of Samuel yohnson, LL.D. By James Boswell. 
London : Printed by Henry Baldwin. 1840. Vol. i, page 194. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 89 

brance of all who are engaged in literary pur- 
suits. If widespread notoriety and use of one's 
publications afford any compensation to an 
author, then no other author was ever so 
largely compensated as he, for in every hamlet 
and cross-roads throughout the entire United 
States Webster's spelling book has been known 
and used for more than a hundred years. 
Over fifty million copies have been issued, and 
there still seems no limit to the demand. 

The series of dictionaries which he originated 
has had a circulation greater than all others 
combined. In the Preface to his earliest Dic- 
tionary he said : lt The United States com- 
menced their existence under circumstances 
wholly novel and unexampled in the history of 
nations. They commenced with civilization, 
with learning, with science, with constitutions 
of free government, and with that best gift of 
God to man, the Christian religion." ' 

The closing sentences of the same Preface 
are as follows : 

" To that great and benevolent Being who, 
during the preparation of this work, has 
sustained a feeble constitution amidst obsta- 
cles and toils, disappointments, infirmities, and 

1 The American Dictionary. By Noah Webster, LL.D. 
New York : Published by S. Converse. 1828. Vol. i, 
Preface. 



90 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

depression, who has twice borne me and my 
manuscripts in safety across the Atlantic, and 
given me strength and resolution to bring the 
work to a close, I would present the tribute of 
my most grateful acknowledgments. And if 
the talent which he intrusted to my care has 
not been put to the most profitable use in his 
service I hope it has not been ' kept laid up 
in a napkin/ and that any misapplication of it 
may be graciously forgiven." 

Thomas Carlyle, essayist and historian, was 
born at Ecclefechan, Scotland, December 4, 
1795, and died February 4, 188 1. 

His articles in various quarterlies, his essays, 
his Oliver Cromwell % s Letters and Speeches, and 
his History of the French Revolution have given 
him great fame. He was offered a pension by 
the English government, and also a burial in 
Westminster Abbey, both of which were de- 
clined. 

In speaking of his father, who was a stone 
mason, he says: " All his strength came from 
God, and he ever sought new nourishment 
there. God be thanked for it. . . . On the 
whole, ought I not to rejoice that God was 
pleased to give me such a father — that from 
earliest years I had the example of a real man 
of God's own making continually before me ? 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 91 

Let me learn of him. Let me write my books 
as he built his houses, and walk as blamelessly 
through this shadow world, if God so will, to 
rejoin him at last. Amen." ' 

In writing of Voltaire and his essays he 
says: "Christianity, the ' worship of sorrow/ 
has been recognized as divine on far other 
grounds than ' essays on miracles/ and by 
considerations infinitely deeper than would 
avail in any mere trial by jury/' 2 

" Religion cannot pass away. The burning 
of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky, 
but the stars are there, and will reappear/' 3 

Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot, historian, 
was born at Nimes, France, October 4, 1787, 
and died September 12, 1874. 

He is best known through his History of 
Civilization in France, but was a voluminous 
writer on political and other subjects. After 
the revolution of 1 830 he became Minister of the 
Interior, afterward Minister of Public Instruc- 
tion, and, from 1840 to 1848, Prime Minister. 

I n 1837, by authority of the United States, 
he wrote a Life of President Washi?igton y and 

1 Reminiscences. By Thomas Carlyle. Edited by J. A. 
Froude. New York : C. Scribner's Sons. 1881. Page 12. 

2 Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. By Thomas Carlyle. 
Boston: Brown & Taggard. i860. Vol. ii, page 68. 

3 Ibid. Page 78. 



92 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

was subsequently honored by having his por- 
trait placed in the chamber of the House of 
Representatives. 

His daughter quotes him as saying, " God 
and the religion of Christ are my guides ; 
moral law is the law to which I would refer 
every question/' 1 "The older I grow the 
more I feel how essential is religion to give 
man the energy and love of goodness which 
he needs. I am convinced that without reli- 
gion, without the continual help of God, man 
can never succeed in wiping out the original 
stain which defiles his nature, nor attain to the 
holiness and purity which ought to be in him 
who would worship God in spirit and in 
truth." 2 

In his Meditations on the Essence of Chris- 
tianity he says : " The opponents of the dogma 
of the incarnation and of the divinity of Jesus 
Christ disregard, equally, man and history — 
the complex elements of human nature, and 
the meaning of the great facts which mark the 
religious life of the human race. What is man 
himself but an incomplete and imperfect in- 
carnation of God? " 3 

1 Guizofs Private Life. By his Daughter. Boston : Estes 
& Lauriat 18S2. Page 13. 2 Ibid. Page 16. 

3 Meditations on the Essence of Christianity. By M. Guizot. 
London : John Murray. 1864. Page 72. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 93 

John Milton, poet, was born in London, Eng- 
land, December 9, 1608, and died November 
8, 1674. 

He was one of the foremost champions of 
the Cromwellian regime and Latin secretary of 
the council of state during Cromwell's protect- 
orate. 

A prolific, graceful, and learned writer, he 
was one of the most remarkable scholars in a 
remarkable age. His "Paradise Lost M almost 
immediately brought him great renown. 

In his Dcfensio Secunda, referring to the 
statement of some of his enemies that his 
blindness was a visitation from God because 
of his opposition to the royalists, he says: " I 
neither feel nor believe myself an object of 
God's anger, but actually experience and ac- 
knowledge his fatherly mercy and kindness to 
me in all matters of greatest moment, espe- 
cially in that I am able, through his conso- 
lation and his strengthening of my spirit, to 
acquiesce in his divine will, thinking oftener of 
what he has bestowed upon me than of what 
he has withheld. " l 

At another time he writes : " I offer it to 
the reason of any man whether he thinks the 
knowledge of Christian religion harder than 

1 Life of John Milton. By David Masson, M. A. London : 
Macmillan & Co. 1877. Vol. iv, page 595. 

7 



94 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

any other art or science to attain. . . . See- 
ing, then, that Christian religion may be so 
easily attained, and by meanest capacities, it 
cannot be much difficult to find ways, both 
how the poor, yea, all men, may be soon 
taught what is to be known of Christianity." * 
" It is written that the coat of our Saviour 
was without seam ; whence some would infer 
that there should be no division in the Church 
of Christ. It should be so, indeed ; yet seams 
in the same cloth neither hurt the garment nor 
misbecome it." 2 

John Greenleaf Whittier, editorial writer and 
poet, was born near Haverhill, Mass., Decem- 
ber 17, 1807, and died September 7, 1892. 

His pen was ever ready with prose or verse 
in defense or aid of whatever was good and 
true. His appeals in behalf of the slave and 
for suffering humanity everywhere endeared 
him to all lovers of mankind. He was always 
fearless in defense of truth and right. 

In many respects he was the equal of any 
American poet, and in clear enunciation of 
moral and religious truth peihaps more pro- 
nounced than any other. 

1 Prose Works of John Milton. By George Burnett. Lon- 
don : Printed for John Miller. 1809. Vol. i, page 16S. 
* Ibid. Page 187. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 95 

Writing upon certain proposed reforms he 
says : " Rejecting, as we must, whatever is in- 
consistent with, or hostile to, the doctrines of 
Christianity, on which alone rests our hope for 
humanity, it becomes us to look kindly upon 
all attempts to apply these doctrines to the 
details of human life, to the social, political, 
and industrial relations of the race." ' 

" We know not, it is true, the conditions of 
our future life ; we know not what it is to pass 
from this state of being to another ; but be- 
fore us, in that dark passage, has gone the 
Man of Nazareth, and the light of his foot- 
steps lingers in the path. Where he, our 
Brother in his humanity, our Redeemer in 
his divine nature, has gone, let us not fear to 
follow:' a 

Of the " inner life " he says : " The hour 
is coming when, under the searching eye of 
philosophy and the terrible analysis of science, 
the letter and the outward evidence will not 
altogether avail us ; when the surest depend- 
ence must be upon the light of Christ within, 
disclosing the law and the prophets in our 
own souls, and confirming the truth of out- 
ward Scripture by inward experience/' 3 

1 Whittia^s Prose Works. Boston and New York : Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co. 1889. Vol. iii, page 20S. 

8 Ibid. Page 272. * Ibid. Page 313. 



96 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Sir Walter Scott, poet and novelist, was born 
in Edinburgh August 15, 1771, and died Sep- 
tember 21, 1832. 

Admitted to the bar when twenty years of 
age, he was soon engaged in literary pursuits, 
and his " Lay of the Last Minstrel " brought 
him early into prominence as a poet. Among 
numerous other poems, published later, " The 
Lady of the Lake " is awarded the chief place. 

His success as a novelist was even greater 
than as a poet. Waverley, at first issued anon- 
ymously, was at once highly popular ; and nu- 
merous other volumes, composed with amaz- 
ing rapidity, were warmly welcomed. His 
Tales of a Grandfather will probably never be 
rivaled by a work of similar character. 

His wonderful success doubtless caused him 
to become a little careless in business ventures 
and personal expenditures, and these, and the 
failure of persons with whom he was associated, 
involved him in debt to the amount of nearly 
$700,000. With amazing courage he set about 
paying off these obligations in full, and through 
the writing of new works and the profits from 
previously written volumes he succeeded — a 
pecuniary success through literary effort abso- 
lutely unrivaled. 

He was remarkably generous and helpful as 
a friend, and endeared himself to all. 



FROM THE LITERARY WORLD. 97 

In his private journal he expresses himself 
as follows : 

" There are few, I trust, who disbelieve the 
existence of a God ; nay, I doubt if at all times, 
and in all moods, any single individual ever 
adopted that hideous creed, though some have 
professed it." l 

u Our hope, heavenly and earthly, is poorly 
anchored if the cable parts upon the strain. I 
believe in God, who can change evil into good ; 
and I am confident that what befalls us is al- 
ways ultimately for the best." 2 

" I would, if called upon, die a martyr for the 
Christian religion, so completely is (in my poor 
opinion) its divine origin proved by its bene- 
ficial effects on the state of society. Were 
we but to name the abolition of slavery and 
polygamy, how much has, in these two words, 
been granted to mankind by the lessons of our 
Saviour/* 3 

Charles Dickens, novelist, was born near 
Portsmouth, England, February 7, 1812, and 
died June 9, 1870. 

The characters in his various works have 
been more widely and more generally quoted 

1 Journal of Sir Walter Scott. New York: Harper & 
Brothers. 1890. Vol. i, page 43. 

*Ibid. Vol. ii, page 60. z Ibid. Vol. ii, page 87. 



98 champions of Christianity. 

than those of any other novelist, and he did 
humanity a large service. " Micawber," " Cap- 
tain Cuttle," and " Paul Dombey M are known 
wherever the English language has a reader. 

In a letter to his son he said : " I put a New 
Testament among your books for the very 
same reasons and with the very same hopes 
that made me write an easy account of it for 
you when you were a little child — because it is 
the best book that ever was, or ever will be, 
known in the world ; and because it teaches 
you the best lessons by which any human 
creature who tries to be truthful and faithful 
to duty can possibly be guided. . . . 

" I now most solemnly impress upon you 
the truth and beauty of the Christian religion 
as it came from Christ himself, and the impos- 
sibility of your going far wrong if you humbly 
but heartily respect it. . . . Never abandon 
the wholesome practice of saying your own 
private prayers night and morning. I have 
never abandoned it myself, and I know the 
comfort of it." 1 

1 Letters of Charles Dickens. New York: Charles Scribner 
& Co. 1879. Vol. ii, page 467. 



Cbampions from tbe Scientific 
Worlo. 




SAMUEL F. !'.. MORSE. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. IOI 



CHAPTER VI. 
Champions from the Scientific World* 

ASTRONOMERS, GEOLOGISTS, PHYSICISTS, CHEMISTS, 
BOTANISTS, NATURALISTS, ORNITHOLOGISTS, 
MATHEMATICIANS, AND INVENTORS. 

Galileo Galilei, astronomer, was born at Pisa, 
Italy, February 18, 1564, and died January 8, 
1642. 

He made the first practical use of the tele- 
scope, and discovered the moons of Jupiter, 
a ring of Saturn, and the motion of the sun 
on its axis. He also discovered the basal prin- 
ciples of hydrostatics, and was the author of 
various works refuting theories opposed to the 
Copernican system. 

His discoveries awakened a fear that prevail- 
ing theological dogmas would be overthrown, 
and envy, jealousy, and ignorance combined to 
secure his condemnation by the Inquisition. 
In opposition to the theory that the earth 
moved the following arguments were gravely 
printed : 

"Animals which move have limbs and 
muscles ; the earth has no limbs or muscles ; 
therefore it cannot move." 



102 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

" The planets, the sun, the fixed stars all 
belong to one species, namely, that of stars ; 
they therefore all move or all stand still," 

It was also said that it was " a grievous 
wrong to place the earth, which is a sink of 
iniquity, among the heavenly bodies, which are 
pure and divine things." 

In defense of his theory, and to show 
that it was not opposed to the teaching of 
Scripture, Galileo quoted Cardinal Baronius as 
saying that " the Holy Spirit intended to 
teach us how to go to heaven, and not how 
the heavens go." 

Certain authorities of the Roman Catholic 
Church determined to prevent the spread of 
his teaching, and finally, in his latter years and 
when broken in health, he was compelled to 
recant his belief in the theories he advocated. 
The recantation, however, extorted through 
physical weakness, was a nullity, for he still 
believed as before, and in a cautious way con- 
tinued to evidence his belief. 

Of his truly religious spirit there can be no 
doubt. In a letter dated February 21, 1635, 
written subsequent to his recantation, he says : 
" Two grounds of consolation continually come 
to my aid. One of these is that in looking all 
through my works no one can find the least 
shadow of anything which deviates from love 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. IO3 

and veneration for the holy Church ; the other 
is my own conscience, which can only be fully 
known to myself on earth and to God in 
heaven. He knows that, in the cause for 
which I suffer, many might have acted and 
spoken with far more learning and knowledge, 
but no one, not even among the holy fathers, 
with more piety and greater zeal for the holy 
Church, nor altogether with purer inten- 
tions." 1 

Sir John F. W. Herschell, astronomer, was 
born at Slough, near Windsor, England, March 
7, 1792, and died May II, 1871. 

He was president of the Royal Astronom- 
ical Society, and one of the greatest astrono- 
mers of the century. He compiled catalogues 
of the stars, wrote various treatises on astro- 
nomical subjects and on sound and light, and 
was the first to make a telescopic survey of the 
entire heavens. 

In one of his essays he expresses himself 
thus: " Cause, design, and nature are, as we 
conceive them, abstractions drawn from ob- 
served analogies, of which our own personal and 
conscious experience supplies the chief mate- 
rials. It is by these primordial analogies that 

1 Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia. By Karl von Geb- 
ler. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1879. Page 279. 



104 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

we are led upward from creation to Creator 
and animated by the prospects of our own im- 
mortal destiny. ,, 1 

One of his addresses says : " The stars are the 
landmarks of the universe, and amidst the 
endless and complicated fluctuations of our 
system seem placed by the Creator as guides 
and records, not merely to elevate our minds 
by the contemplation of what is vast, but to 
teach us to direct our actions by reference to 
what is immutable in his works." a 

Sir David Brewster, physicist, was born at 
Jedburgh, Scotland, December II, 1781, and 
died February 10, 1868. 

He discovered the polarization of light, in- 
vented the kaleidoscope, and mastered some 
of the most difficult problems of optics. 

In his Life of Newton he says : " The antiq- 
uity and authenticity of the books which com- 
pose the sacred canon, the fulfillment of its 
prophecies, the miraculous propagation of the 
Gospel have been demonstrated to all who are 
capable of appreciating the force of historical 
evidence ; and in the poetical and prose com- 
positions of the inspired authors we discover 

1 Essays and Addresses. By Sir J. F. W. Herschel, Bart., 
K.H. London : Longman, Brown, Green & Co. 1857. Page 
239. 2 Ibid. Page 469. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. 105 

a system of doctrine and a code of morality, 
traced in characters as distinct and legible as 
the most unerring truths of the material 
world." ■ 

In his work, entitled More Worlds than One, 
he says : " When our Saviour speaks of the 
sheepfold of which he is the door, and of the 
sheep who follow him and know his voice 
and for whom he was to lay down his life, 
he adds : * And other sheep I have, which are 
not of this fold ; them also I must bring, and 
they shall hear my voice ; and there shall be 
one fold, and one shepherd/ " 2 

" When our Saviour died the influence of 
his death extended backward in the past, 
to millions who never heard his name, and 
forward in the future, to millions who will 
never hear it. Though it radiated but from 
the Holy City, it reached to the remotest 
lands, and affected every living race in the Old 
and the New World. Distance in time and 
distance in place did not diminish its healing 
virtue." 3 

1 Life of Newton. By Sir David Brewster. Edinburgh : 
Thomas Constable & Co. 1855. Vol. ii, page 358. 

2 More Worlds than One. By Sir David Brewster, M.A., 
D.C.L. London: Chatto & Windus. 1874. Page 16. 

3 Ibid. Page 166. 



106 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Joseph Henry, physicist, was born at Albany, 
N. Y., December 17, 1797, and died May 13, 
1878. 

Serving in various honorable offices, he is 
best known through his position as secretary 
and chief executive of the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion at Washington. 

This institution was founded by James 
Smithson, an Englishman, who, in 1829, left 
his fortune of upward of $500,000 to the 
United States to found an establishment " for 
the increase and diffusion of knowledge among 
men." Professor Henry, in December, 1846, 
became the first secretary of the corporation, 
projected its plan of operations, and under his 
able leadership the property increased more 
than threefold. The institution has served not 
only the nation, but the world, through the 
discoveries it has promoted. Several score of 
valuable works bearing its imprint have been 
issued, the number of volumes printed reach- 
ing hundreds of thousands. 

Professor Henry was the author of nearly 
a hundred articles and monographs on scien- 
tific subjects. He invented the wire-wound or 
electro-magnet, and demonstrated the ability 
of this magnet to transmit its power several 
miles. He did this several years before the 
introduction of the telegraph. He also made 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. 107 

important contributions to scientific knowledge 
by his discoveries in meteorology, acoustics, 
and other branches of physics, but refused to 
patent his inventions, giving them freely to the 
world, and was thus doubly a benefactor to 
mankind. 

When he died he received honors such as 
have been paid to but few persons since the 
United States was established. His funeral 
services were arranged for by a joint committee 
of the Senate and House of Representatives. 
They were attended by the President, by the 
justices of the Supreme Court, by members of 
both houses of Congress, by the heads of the 
Army and Navy Departments, by the Diplo- 
matic Corps from foreign governments, and by 
all the dignitaries of the nation then in Wash- 
ington. Memorial addresses were delivered by 
Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, by Professor 
Asa Gray, by James A. Garfield, by General 
W. T. Sherman, and others. Fifteen thousand 
copies of a memorial volume were published 
by Congress, and a bronze statue was ordered 
erected in the Smithsonian grounds in his honor. 

In a long and familiar letter to a friend he 
discusses several religious questions as follows: 
" After all our speculations and an attempt to 
grapple with the problem of the universe, the 
simplest conception which explains and con- 



108 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

nects the phenomena is that of the existence 
of one spiritual Being — infinite in wisdom, in 
power, and all divine perfections, which exists 
always and everywhere — which has created us 
with intellectual faculties sufficient in some 
degree to comprehend its operations, as they 
are developed in nature, by what is called 
* science.' " * 

At another time he said : " That there is one 
God, an infinite Spirit ; that man is made up 
of body and soul ; that there is an immortal 
life for man, reaching out beyond the present 
world ; that the power and love of God are 
brought into relation with the weakness and 
sinfulness of man in the Lord Jesus Christ — of 
these great truths I have no doubt. I regard 
the system which teaches them as rational 
beyond any of the opposing theories which 
have come under my view. Upon Jesus 
Christ as the One who, for God, affiliates him- 
self with man— upon him I rest my faith and 
my hope." a 

Sir Charles Lyell, geologist, was born at 
Kinnordy, Scotland, November 14, 1797, and 
died February 22, 1875. 

1 A Memorial of Joseph Henry. Published by order of 
Congress. Washington : Government Printing Office. 1880. 
Page 24. 8 Ibid. Page 19. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. IO9 

He was an expert geologist and the author of 
numerous works. His Principles of Geology was 
like a new revelation on that subject, and his 
abilities procured him the recognition of Queen 
Victoria, by whom he was knighted. 

In his Principles of Geology he says: " In 
whatever direction we pursue our researches, 
whether in time or space, we discover every- 
where the clear proofs of a creative intelli- 
gence, and of his foresight, wisdom, and 
power. 

"As geologists we learn that it is not only 
the present condition of the globe which has 
been suited to the accommodation of myriads 
of living creatures, but that many former 
states, also, have been adapted to the organ- 
ization and habits of prior races of beings. 

" The disposition of the seas, continents, 
and islands and the climates have varied ; the 
species, likewise, have been changed, and yet 
they have all been so modeled on types 
analogous to those of existing plants and 
animals as to indicate throughout a perfect 
harmony of design and unity of purpose. 

11 To assume that the evidence of the begin- 
ning or end of so vast a scheme lies within 
the reach of our philosophical inquiries, or 
even of our speculations, appears to be incon- 
sistent with a just estimate of the relations 



IIO CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which subsist between the finite powers of 
man and the attributes of an infinite and 
eternal Being/' ' 

Sir John William Dawson, geologist, was 
born in Nova Scotia in 1820. 

He studied in Edinburgh, explored Nova 
Scotia w T ith Sir Charles Lyell, and subse- 
quently became chancellor of McGill College 
at Montreal. 

He discovered the eozoon in the Laurentian 
limestone of Canada, thus revealing the oldest 
known form of animal life. He is the author 
of numerous works on geological subjects, was 
awarded a gold medal by the London Geolog- 
ical Society, and was knighted by the queen. 

In speaking of the fact that there is still 
much to be learned in geology, he says: 
" Even in the longest journey of the most 
adventurous traveler there is an end of dis- 
covery ; and in the study of nature cape rises 
beyond cape and mountain beyond mountain 
interminably. The finite cannot comprehend 
the infinite; the temporal, the eternal. We 
need not, however, on that account, be agnos- 
tics, for it is still true that, within the scope 
of our narrow powers and opportunities, the 

1 Principles of Geology. By Sir Charles Lyell. New York : 
D. Appleton & Co. 1858. Page 799, 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. I I I 

supreme Intelligence reveals to us in nature 
his power and divinity ; and it is this, and 
this alone, that gives attraction and dignity to 
natural science.' ' ' 

" Christianity itself is, . . . not so much a 
revelation of the supernatural, as the highest 
bond of the great unity of nature. It reveals 
to us the perfect Man, who is also one with 
God, and the mission of this divine Man to 
restore the harmonies of God and humanity, 
and consequently, also, of man with his natural 
environment in this world, and with his 
spiritual environment in the higher world of 
the future." 2 

Sir Humphry Davy, chemist, was born at 
Penzance, England, December 17, 1778, and 
died May 28, 1829. 

He is best known by his invention, in 181 5. 
of the safety lamp for miners, the use of 
which has undoubtedly saved tens of thou- 
sands of lives. For this invention, which he 
refused to patent, he was presented by the 
Russian emperor with a splendid vase, accom- 
panied with a personal letter. He also dis- 
covered several chemical elements. 

1 Some Salient Points in the Science of the Earth. By Sir 
J. W. Dawson, C.M.G., LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., etc. New 
York: Harper & Brothers. 1894. Page 6. *Ibid. Page 495. 



112 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

He was the friend of Humboldt, Laplace, 
and other scientists. Cuvier said of him : 
" Davy, not yet thirty-two years of age, in the 
opinion of all who could judge of such labors, 
held the first rank among the chemists of this 
or any other country." 

As to his sympathy with religion Davy said : 
" I am never more delighted than when I am 
able to deduce any moral and religious conclu- 
sions from philosophical truths. Science is val- 
uable for many reasons ; but there is nothing 
that gives it so high and dignified a character 
as the means which it affords of interpreting 
the works of nature so as to unfold the wis- 
dom and glory of the Creator." ' 

" The simple and fundamental truths of the 
Christian religion are perfectly intelligible ; 
namely, the unity of God, the necessity of 
morality, and the future state of retribution 
founded on the resurrection." 3 

"Of all the religions which have operated 
on the human mind, Christianity alone has 
the consistent character of perfect truth ; all 
its parts are arranged with the most beautiful 
symmetry; and its grand effects have been 

1 Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, Bart By his 
brother, John Davy, M.D., F.R.S. London: Smith, Elder 
& Co. 1839. Vol. i, page 128. 

2 Ibid. Page 19. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. 113 

constantly connected with virtuous gratifica- 
tion, with moral and intellectual improvement, 
with the present and future happiness." 1 

Michael Faraday, chemist, was born at New- 
ington Butts, England, September 22, 1791, 
and died August 25, 1867. 

He was one of the most expert chemists of 
any age, produced many new and rare chem- 
icals, and was the author of several score of 
articles on chemical subjects, which were pub- 
lished by the Royal Society. He was a mem- 
ber of numerous learned societies, and was 
honored with various degrees from both Ox- 
ford and Cambridge. 

Once a poor errand boy, a newspaper car- 
rier, he afterward received nearly a hundred 
honorary titles and marks of merit, and had 
the honor of a government pension and a resi- 
dence in Hampton court palace. 

A letter to his niece contains these words : 
" I cannot think that death has to the Chris- 
tian anything in it that should make it a rare 
or other than a constant thought. . . . My 
worldly faculties are slipping away day by 
day. Happy it is for all of us that the true 

1 Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. By his 
brother, John Davy, M.D., F.R.S. London: Smith, Elder 
& Co. 1839. Vol. i, page 144. 



114 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

goodness lies not in them. As they ebb may 
they leave us as little children, trusting in the 
Father of mercies and accepting his unspeak- 
able gift/' x 

When the dark shadows were creeping over 
him he wrote to the Comte de Paris thus: 
" I bow before him who is Lord of all, and 
hope to be kept waiting patiently for his time 
and mode of releasing me, according to his 
divine word and the great and precious prom- 
ises whereby his people are made partakers 
of the divine nature/' 2 

Carl von Linne, or Linnaeus, botanist, was 
born near Rashult, Sweden, May 13, 1707, and 
died January 10, 1778. 

To him belongs the honor of being the 
only individual of his time who classified and 
described all the animals, plants, and minerals 
then known. The fact of his having accom- 
plished such a task abundantly proves his ex- 
traordinary genius, energy, judgment, and zeal. 

All of his most important works begin and 
end with some verse from the Scriptures, and 
his diary contains many indications of his 
reverence for and gratitude to God. The 

1 Life and Letters of Faraday. By Dr. Bence-Jones. 
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1870. Vol. ii, pages 
429, 430. 2 Ibid. Vol. ii, page 477. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. 1 I 5 

first time he crossed Putney Heath, England, 
the sight of the gorse blossom in its blaze of 
May made him fall on his knees in rapture to 
thank God for making anything so beautiful. 

On June 24, 173 1, O. S., while in Lapland, 
he wrote in his diary: "Blessed be the Lord 
for the beauty of summer and of spring, and 
for what is here in greater perfection than 
almost anywhere else in the world — the air, 
the water, the verdure of the herbage, and the 
song of birds." ' 

He concluded the record of the occurrences 
of his life with these words: "The Lord was 
with thee wherever thou didst go." a 

Asa Gray, American botanist, was born in 
Paris, N. Y., November 18, 1810, and died Jan- 
uary 30, 1888. 

His text-books are so well known, and have 
been studied by so many millions of students, 
that his name is a household word, and no 
one outranked him in his specialty. 

In his Natural Science and Religion he says : 
" An excellent judge, a gifted adept in phys- 
ical science and exact reasoning, the late Clerk 
Maxwell, is reputed to have said, not long 

1 Through the Fields with Limnrus. By Florence Caddy. 
Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 18S7. Vol. i, page 179. 
2 Ibid. Vol. ii, page 359. 



Il6 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

before he left the world that he had scruti- 
nized all the agnostic hypotheses he knew of, 
and found that they one and all needed a 
God to make them workable. ,, l 

" However we may differ in regard to the 
earlier stages of religious development, we 
shall agree in this, that revelation culminated, 
and for us most essentially consists, in the 
advent of a divine Person, who, being made 
man, manifested the divine nature in union 
with the human ; and that this manifestation 
constitutes Christianity. Having accepted the 
doctrine of the incarnation, itself the crowning 
miracle, attendant miracles are not obstacles 
to belief." 8 

Baron George Leopold Chretien Frederic 
Dagobert Cuvier, naturalist, was born at Mont- 
b£liard, France, August 23, 1769, and died at 
Paris May 13, 1832. 

When twelve years old he was as familiar 
with quadrupeds and birds as many natural- 
ists. He drew and colored representations of 
insects, birds, and plants with surprising cor- 
rectness and fidelity. He originated the cele- 
brated collection of comparative anatomy in 

1 Natural Science and Religion. By Asa Gray. New 
York : C. Scribner's Sons. 1880. Page 91. 

2 Ibid. Page 108. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. 117 

the Museum of Natural History of Paris, and 
was made by Napoleon one of the councilors 
of the Imperial University. His work on 
Fossil Remains, published in 1812, revolution- 
ized the study of geology. 

One honor or office after another was con- 
ferred upon him, and he numbered among his 
friends and correspondents the most learned 
men of his time. The publication of his mag- 
nificent work on ichthyology was begun in 
1828; it contained descriptions of several 
thousand fishes not previously described. In 
zoology and entomology he was equally at 
home, and he discovered many new classes in 
both these departments of science. He ex- 
posed many errors connected with the discov- 
eries of fossil remains, while his own conjec- 
tures as to the form and size of certain extinct 
animals were repeatedly verified. 

His lectures on various subjects showed 
great familiarity with the Bible, and he was 
one of the vice presidents of the Bible Society. 
In his introduction to the history of those 
awarded prizes in virtue by the French Acad- 
emy he said: "We read in the holy writings, 
* Love God above all things, and your neigh- 
bors as yourselves; the law and the prophets 
are contained in these two precepts.' Thus, he 
who has followed these precepts is virtuous ; 



Il8 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

he will have accomplished the entire law. 
Now, what is it to love God? How can we 
prove that we love him ? It is by conforming 
to his will, by doing that which he orders. And 
the first thing which he commands us to do, 
after loving him, is to love our neighbors as 
ourselves ; and our neighbors are all men, with- 
out distinction or exception, as the Gospel also 
teaches us in the parable of the Samaritan/' l 

Louis Jean Rudolphe Agassiz, naturalist, 
was born at Motier, Switzerland, May 28, 1807, 
and died December 14, 1873. 

He was confessedly one of the greatest scien- 
tists of all time. He originated the accepted 
glacial theory, and is the author of numerous 
works. Of these the most notable are Fossil 
Fishes and Contributions to the Natural History 
of the United States. 

Concerning his belief and practice he de- 
clared : " For myself I may say that I now 
never make the preparations for penetrating 
into some small province of nature hitherto 
undiscovered without breathing a prayer to 
the Being who hides his secrets from me only 
to allure me graciously on to the unfolding of 
them. I sometimes hear preachers speak of 

1 Memoirs of Baron Cuvier. By Mrs. R. Lee. New York : 
J. & J. Harper. 1S33. Page 86. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. 119 

the sad condition of men who live without 
God in the world ; but a scientist who lives 
without God in the world seems to me worse 
off than ordinary men." l 

In one of his works he says: "The products 
of what are commonly called physical agents 
are everywhere the same (that is, upon the 
whole surface of the globe), and have always 
been the same (that is, during all geological 
periods), while organized beings are every- 
where different, and have differed in all ages. 
Between two such series of phenomena there 
can be no casual or genetic connection. 

"The combination in time and space of all 
these thoughtful conceptions exhibits not only 
thought, it shows also premeditation, power, 
wisdom, greatness, prescience, omniscience, 
providence. In one word, all these facts in 
their natural connection proclaim aloud the one 
God, whom man may know, adore, and love ; 
and natural history must in good time become 
the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of 
the universe, as manifested in the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms." a 

1 Recollections of Eminent Men. By E. F. Whipple. Bos- 
ton : Ticknor & Co. 1887. Page 96. 

2 Contributions to the Natural History of the United States 
of America. By Louis Agassiz. Boston : Little, Brown & 
Co. 1857. Vol. i, page 135. 



120 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Alexander Wilson, ornithologist, was born 
at Paisley, Scotland, July 6, 1766, and died 
August 23, 1813. 

Largely self-educated, he was highly es- 
teemed as a poet and artist, as well as a stu- 
dent of bird life. He was the first to publish 
a work on American ornithology, supplemen- 
tary volumes to this work being added by 
Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte, a nephew of 
the great Napoleon. A statue in honor of 
Wilson is erected in his native town. 

In a letter to a friend he says : " God visits 
those with distress whose enjoyments he 
wishes to render more exquisite. The storms 
of affliction do not last forever, and sweet is 
the serene air and warm sunshine after a day 
of darkness and tempest. ... It is our duty 
to bow with hufnble resignation to the deci- 
sions of the great Father of all, rather receiv- 
ing with gratitude the blessings he is pleased 
to bestow than repining at the loss he thinks 
proper to take from us." ' 

In an essay on ornithology he says : " Men 
join with reverence in praises to the great Cre- 
ator ; and can they listen with contempt to the 
melodious strains, the hymns of praise, which 

1 Memoirs and Remains of Alexander Wilson* By Rev. 
A. B. Grosart. Paisley : Alexander Gardner. 1876. Vol. i, 
page 105. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. 121 

these joyful little ci*eatures [the birds] offer up 
every morning to the Fountain of life and 
light? . . . Are tenderness of heart, fidelity, 
and parental affection only lovely when they 
exist among men ? O, no ; it is impossible ! 
These virtues, that are esteemed the highest 
ornaments of our nature, seem to be emana- 
tions from the Divinity himself, and may be 
traced in many of the humblest and least re- 
garded of his creatures." ' 

John James Audubon, ornithologist, was 
born in Louisiana May 4, 1780, and died Jan- 
uary 27, 185 1. 

His work, Birds of America, a most ele- 
gantly and expensively illustrated production, 
and not less accurate than elegant, was pro- 
nounced by Baron Cuvier to be the most 
splendid monument which had ever been 
erected in honor of ornithology. Its price 
was $1,000, and that it found numerous pur- 
chasers in days when money was far from 
plentiful is the best evidence of its attractive- 
ness and worth. 

In the obtaining of living originals for his 
sketches and paintings he traversed the woods 

1 Memoirs and Remains of Alexander Wilson. By Rev. 
A. B. Grosart. Paisley: Alexander Gardner. 1876. Vol. i, 
page 257. 



122 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and shores in all parts of the country, and 
endured privations and dangers that would 
have discouraged others. A conscientious 
determination to describe and illustrate his 
theme with accuracy and fullness was the im- 
pulse that gave him success and fame. 

Whether in his own land or across the sea 
he was always in possession of a reverential 
spirit. In speaking of an artist who was 
pleased with his work he said : " The reason 
why my works pleased him was because they 
are all exact copies of the works of God, who 
is the great Architect and perfect Artist." 

In his journal he speaks of hearing a sermon 
in London by the noted Sydney Smith, and 
says : " It was a sermon to me. . . . He 
made me smile, and he made me think more 
deeply, perhaps, than I had ever before in my 
life. He interested me by painting my foibles, 
and then he pained me by portraying my sins, 
until he made my cheeks crimson with shame 
and filled my heart with penitential sorrow ; 
and I left the church filled with veneration for 
God and reverence for the wonderful man 
who is so noble an example of his marvelous 
handiwork/' ' 

On his arrival at New York, after a pro- 

l Life of John James Audubon. Edited by his Widow. 
New York : G. P. Putnam & Son. 1869. Page 141. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. 123 

longed tarry in England, he says : " I clasped 
my hands and fell on my knees, and raising 
my eyes to heaven — that happy land above — 
I offered my thanks to our God that he had 
preserved and prospered me in my long 
absence/' ' 

Sir Isaac Newton, physicist and mathema- 
tician, was born at Woolsthorpe, England, 
December 25, 1642, and died March 20, 1727. 

In the autumn of 1665, when only twenty- 
three years of age, the sight of an apple falling 
from a tree suggested to him the law of gravi- 
tation, and his powers of thought and reason 
were such that he was able to formulate the 
existence of a law which, before, had existed 
only in the mind of the Infinite. 

His great work, Principia, discusses math- 
ematical questions of such an abstruse na- 
ture that but few persons can master its con- 
tents; indeed nearly all his researches dealt in 
questions requiring clear and comprehensive 
knowledge of a large variety of uncommon 
subjects. 

In one of his dissertations he says : " Oppo- 
site to godliness is atheism in profession and 
idolatry in practice. Atheism is so sense- 

1 Life of John James Audubon. Edited by his Widow. 
New York : G. P. Putnam & Son. 1869. Page 183. 



124 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

less and odious to mankind that it never had 
many professors." ' 

Once, when religion was spoken of with dis- 
respect, he said, " I have studied these things ; 
you have not." a 

In his " Short Scheme of True Religion " 
he says : " We are therefore to acknowledge 
one God, infinite, eternal, omnipresent, om- 
niscient, omnipotent, the Creator of all things, 
most wise, most just, most good, most holy. 
We must love him, fear him, honor him, trust 
in him, pray to him, give him thanks, praise 
him, hallow his name, obey his commandments, 
and set times apart for his service." 3 

" ' To us there is but one God, the Father, 
of whom are all things; and one Lord Jesus 
Christ, by whom are all things/ and we by 
him ; ' that is, we are to worship the Father 
alone as God Almighty, and Jesus alone as the 
Lord, the Messiah, the great King, the Lamb 
of God, who was slain, and hath redeemed us 
with his blood, and made us kings and 
priests." 4 

1 Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton. By Sir David Brewster, 
K.H. Edinburgh: Thomas Constable & Co. 1855. Vol. ii. 
page 347. 

2 Ibid. Vol. ii, page 408. 

3 Ibid. Vol. ii, page 348. 

4 Ibid. Vol. ii, page 350. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. 12$ 

Sir William Rowan Hamilton, mathemati- 
cian, was born in Dublin, Ireland, August 4, 
1805, and died September 2, 1865. 

From early boyhood to old age he was a 
most remarkable scholar. At five years of 
age he was reading Hebrew, Greek, and Latin ; 
at eight years of age he had added the study 
of French and Italian, and at ten he was also 
studying Arabic and Sanskrit. When only 
fourteen he was systematically studying astron- 
omy and making nightly observations with a 
telescope, connecting with them abstruse and 
difficult calculations. At this same period he 
literally enjoyed performing in his mind long 
arithmetical problems, extracting the square 
and cube roots without the aid of pencil or 
paper. Yet he was full of humor and greatly 
enjoyed athletic sports. 

Through these years he was an omnivorous 
reader, and took down, in shorthand, sermons, 
speeches, and addresses. Before he was twenty- 
one he wrote papers which were read before, 
and commended by, different learned societies. 

When only sixteen years old, writing to his 
sister, he said : " In studying conic sections 
and other parts of geometry I have often 
been struck with the occurrence of what may 
be called demonstrated mysteries, since, though 
they are proved by rigidly mathematical proof, 



126 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

it is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive how 
they can be true. ... If, therefore, within 
the very domain of that science which is most 
within the grasp of human reason, which rests 
on the firm pillars of demonstration, and is 
totally removed from doubt or dispute, there 
are truths which we cannot comprehend, why 
should we suppose that we can understand 
everything connected with the nature and at- 
tributes of an infinite Being? * For if ye un- 
derstand not earthly things, how shall ye those 
that are heavenly ? ' " * 

In a letter to Wordsworth, in speaking of one 
who was studying Plato, Mr. Hamilton says : 
" I trust that, while he thus unspheres the 
spirit of Plato, to unfold the discoveries that 
have been made by the light of ancient reason, 
he will not imitate some modern Platonists in 
despising that better light which has since 
risen on man, and which, though by the Greeks 
deemed foolishness, we know to be indeed the 
power and the wisdom of God." a 

In another letter, in referring to Dr. Chan- 
ning, he says : " Others, who have searched far 
more than he has done into the heights and 

1 Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Kt., LL.D., 
D.C.L., M.R.I.A., etc. By Robert Perceval Graves, M.A. 
Dublin : Hodges, Figgis & Co. 1 332. Page 92. 

* Ibid. Page 331. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. 12 7 

depths of thought, have been compelled to 
acknowledge mysteries of reason which pre- 
pare for and harmonize with the mysteries 
ascribed to religion by the great body of the 
Christian Church ; they have felt that the in- 
carnation and passion are not incredible to 
those who believe and meditate on the earlier 
mystery of creation." ' 

James Watt, inventor, was born at Green- 
ock, Scotland, January 19, 1736, and died Au- 
gust 19, 1819. 

His invention of the steam engine relieved 
both man and beast of toils innumerable, and 
introduced conditions that have blessed the 
world. 

Sir Walter Scott said of him, u He was not 
only the most profound man of science, but 
one of the kindest of human beings." Words- 
worth, twenty years after Watt's death, said 
of him, " I look upon him, considering both 
the magnitude and universality of his genius, 
as perhaps the most extraordinary man that 
this country has produced." Sir James Mack- 
intosh placed him " at the head of all inventors 
in all ages and nations." 

1 Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, A'/., LL.D., 
D.C.L., M.R.I.A., etc. By Robert Perceval Graves, M.A. 
Dublin : Hodges, Figgis & Co. 1882. Page 465. 



128 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

A colossal statue was erected in his honor 
in Westminster Abbey, the inscription on it 
being written by Lord Brougham. 

On hearing of the death of a friend he 
wrote : " We may all pray that our latter end 
may be like his ; he has truly gone to sleep in 
the arms of his Creator. . . . Let us cherish 
the friends we have left, and do as much good 
as we can in our day." ' 

At another time he wrote : " I, in particular, 
have reason to thank God that he has pre- 
served me so well as I am. ... I can offer 
no other consolations than what are derived 
from religion." 2 

Samuel Finley Breese Morse, electrician, was 
born at Charlestown, Mass., April 29, 1791 , and 
died April 2, 1872. 

His invention of the electric telegraph 
brought great advantages to the entire world, 
and upon no inventor were greater honors 
showered. The Sultan of Turkey sent him 
the decoration of the Order of Glory. Italy 
bestowed the cross of a Knight of Maurizio 
and Lazaro ; Prussia, the gold medal for Scien- 
tific Merit ; Spain, the cross of Knight Com- 

fe of James Watt. By James Patrick Muirhead. New- 
York : D. Appleton & Co. 1S59. Page 397. 
2 Ibid, Page 399. 



CHAMPIONS FROM SCIENTIFIC WORLD. I2g 

mander of the Order of Isabella ; Austria, a 
gold medal ; Portugal, the cross of a Knight 
of the Tower and Sword ; and the governments 
of France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, 
Sardinia, Tuscany, the Holy See, Russia, Swe- 
den, and Turkey united in the gift of four hun- 
dred thousand francs. 

At a public banquet given him in i863 he 
said : " If not a sparrow fall to the ground 
without a definite purpose in the plans of in- 
finite Wisdom, can the creation of an instru- 
ment [the telegraph] so vitally affecting the in- 
terests of the whole human race have an origin 
less humble than the Father of every good and 
perfect gift ? I am sure I have the sympathy 
of such an assembly as is here gathered to- 
gether if, in all humility, and in the sincerity 
of a grateful heart, I use the words of inspira- 
tion in ascribing honor and praise to Him to 
whom, first of all and most of all, it is pre- 
eminently due: * Not unto us, not unto us, 
but to God, be all the glory' — not, 'What 
hath man done ? ' but, ' What hath God 
wrought ? ' " * 

Rev. Dr. William Adams, of New York, of 
whose church Mr. Morse was a member, 
speaking of his last days, says : " At the holy 

1 Lives of Electricians. By William T. Jeans. London: 
Whittaker & Co. 1887. Page 315. 



I30 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

communion, . . . at the close of the service, he 
approached me with more than usual warmth 
and pressure of the hand, and, with a beaming 
countenance, said, ' O, this is something better 
than standing before princes/ ... At another 
time he said, i I love to be studying the guide- 
book of the country to which I am going ; I 
wish to know more and more about it.' A 
few days before his decease, in the privacy of 
his chamber, I spoke to him of the great good- 
ness of God to him in his remarkable life. 
1 Yes, so good, so good,' was the quick response, 
'and the best part of all is yet to come.' " l 

1 Lives of Electricians. By William T. Jeans. London : 
Whittaker & Co. 1887. Pages 320, 321. 



Zhe Bwarb. 



THE AWARD. I 33 



CHAPTER VII. 
The Award* 

CHAMPIONS like these are necessarily 
victorious. Many of the challenges are 
evidently spontaneous and unpremeditated, 
given with easy naturalness in letters and con- 
versations with intimates ; others are clearly 
the result of a distinct purpose to emphasize 
a personal belief in Christianity and the Holy 
Scriptures. Some represent the flush of youth, 
some the vigor of manhood, and others the 
matured thought of a long and vigorous life ; 
in some the intellect, and in others the heart, 
finds expression; and, taken singly or together, 
they are strong, convincing, overwhelming. 

The variety, range, and scope of the utter- 
ances give them greatly increased force, and, 
combined, they exhibit all the tenderness, 
faith, and devotion that the most simple- 
hearted Christian could desire. Men from land 
and sea, from city and country, from hamlet 
and metropolis, from occupations pursued in 
the quiet of study and laboratory cloistered 
from the world and from amid all forms of 



134 CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

business activity; philosophers and investiga- 
tors of things tangible and intangible, animate 
and inanimate, in earth and sea and sky, some 
educated in the schools, and others only by 
contact with the world ; men who unraveled 
the most secret operations of nature, and were 
familiar with the inmost workings of the human 
frame, nay, even with the sources of life — all 
defend the same religious truths. 

Many of these champions were accustomed 
to observe nature in all her moods and mani- 
festations. Some watched the storm clouds, 
analyzed their contents, and drew their light- 
ning; others peered into the deepest blue of 
the heavens, followed the stars in their courses, 
and marked their paths. 

Some were men of affairs, accustomed to 
weigh and decide matters of the highest judi- 
cial and national importance. Others possessed 
the keenest of intellects, and were known and 
recognized as the coolest and clearest of 
thinkers, with analytic minds and of unanswer- 
able logic. 

These men, some born amid high social 
surroundings, and others in direst poverty, 
titled and untitled, engaged in varied voca- 
tions, amid peculiar surroundings, and under 
such circumstances that they literally com- 
passed the world's thought and work ; men of 



THE AWARD. I 35 

every age and clime, nationality and environ- 
ment, stand together in defense of Christian- 
ity and the Bible. When such men champion 
Christianity, we may well believe that all who 
oppose it lead a forlorn hope and essay an im- 
possible task. All hail our King and Ruler ! 
Hail to our Lord and Christ ! Hail, Saviour 
of mankind ! 



IN DEX. 

PAGE 

Agassiz, Louis J. R 118 

Agnew, D. Hayes 44 

Allston, Washington 60 

Angelo, Michael (Buonarroti) 59 

Audubon, John J , 121 

Bewick, Thomas 62 

Bismarck, Count von 19 

Blackstone, Sir William 23 

Blake, Robert 29 

Brewster, Sir David 104 

Bryant, William Cullen 79 

Buonarotti, Michael Angelo 59 

Carlyle, Thomas 90 

Caxton, William 76 

Cooper, Anthony Ashley , 38 

Cuvier, Baron 116 

Davy, Sir Humphry in 

Dawson, Sir J. W no 

Dickens, Charles 97 

Dodge, William E 4S 

Diirer, Albert 61 

Ebers, Georg S4 

Erskine, Lord Thomas 46 

Faraday, Michael 113 

Farragut, David G 31 



I38 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Galilei, Galileo 101 

Garibaldi, Guiseppe 22 

Gladstone, William E 20 

Grant, Ulysses S 27 

Gray, Asa 115 

Guizot, Francois P. G 91 

Gutenberg, John 75 

Hamilton, Sir William Rowan 125 

Handel, Sir George Frederick 70 

Harvey, William 40 

Haydn, Joseph 71 

Henry, Joseph 106 

Herschell, Sir J. F. W 103 

Holland, Josiah G 77 

Howard, John 37 

Jenner, Edward 41 

Johnson, Samuel 86 

Lepsius, Richard 83 

Linne (Linnaeus), Carl von 114 

Lyell, Sir Charles 108 

Milton, John 93 

Moltke, Count Von 27 

Morse, Samuel F. B 128 

Muller, F. Max 80 

Newton, Sir Isaac 123 

Palissy, Bernard 63 

Raleigh, Sir Walter 52 

Sayce, Archibald Henry 82 

Scott, Sir George Gilbert 69 

Scott, Sir Walter 96 



INDEX. I39 

PAGE 

Simpson, Sir James Y 42 

Stanley, Henry M 53 

Story, Joseph 25 

Washington, George 21 

Watt, James 127 

Webster, Daniel 47 

Webster, Noah 88 

Wedgwood, Josiah 66 

Whittier, John G 94 

Williams, Sir George 49 

Wilson, Alexander 120 

Wren, Sir Christopher 68 



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